The Name of the Thing and the Thing Itself

THE NAME OF THE THING AND THE THING ITSELF
1.1 Driving a land rover on an exercise while I was in the army, my co-driver taught me about rally driving.
1.2 He told me how in rally driving corners are graded according to how tight or open they are. If a corner had a higher number it meant that it was tighter, a lower number meant that the corner was more open. The lower the number the faster we could go around it. Other information that the navigator gave the driver was the direction of the turn, left or right, and the time to the turn, a countdown.
1.3 Looking ahead he told me the direction and the grade of each turn and gave me a countdown to it. I focused on listening and adjusting my speed appropriately. As we rounded each corner I found that his grading felt very natural so that it was easy to trust his assessment of each corner.
1.4 I think part of the comfort level was the way he described each turn. It was unambiguous and natural and direct. Because he was describing exactly what he was seeing, he was providing me a direct view of the way ahead. And I was allowing him to give me that view. Neither one of us second-guessed the other. He focused on navigating and I focused on driving and together with the vehicle we were in we made the idea of driving real. And even though we weren’t actually rallying, all we were doing was that he was seeing and I was doing, it felt good to work with him in this way and I got a sense of what actual rallying and teamwork could be like.
1.5 I had a similar experience with another friend. Chatting on the phone with her as she drove to a race track, she described the route to me as she experienced it. I wrote the details down and the next day was able to follow it without a problem. This was in direct contrast to the previous morning when trying to pick her up I got lost five times and a trip that should have taken 40 minutes took 2 hours.
1.6 A long time ago as one of my oriental calligraphy projects I tried to come up with my own translation of the first verse of “The Dao De Ching.” One line in particular I found troublesome and interesting. “The name of a thing is not the thing.”
1.7 Thinking back to the time I was rallying with Taff I began to understand one possible translation of that verse. When we know what it is we are talking about, if we say what we see, plainly and clearly, so that the person listening can see what we mean then the name becomes the thing. If we express our truth so that the person is listening can see our true selves, the words become the thing we are talking about. When we understand something completely, so that it is a part of our experience, then the name becomes the thing.
1.8 So how is this relevant here? When Taff told me exactly what he saw and I understood him it was so easy to connect to him and trust him, easy to let go. And I imagine that with a good lead that is how a partner feels when they are dancing, like she can let go. And perhaps it is a letting go on both parties parts, the navigator relaxing enough, trusting that their driver will understand and so saying what they see without modification, the driver relaxing enough to trust implicitly what his or her copilot is saying.
1.9 Zero parallax, words reflecting their meaning for both the person saying the words and the person listening to them.