Confusion Isn’t Infinity, it’s Twelve (or Three)

All professional musicians go through ear training. This is where they develop the ability to play back melodies, or write them out in musical notation, using only their ears. It's daunting for newbies, and while you'd imagine it gets easier with practice—and it does—the real key is reframing:

There are not infinite notes. There are only twelve.

This is a huge—and hugely useful—realization. What's more, these twelve notes are your friends. We've all heard all the notes umpteen zillion times. They are few, and they are eminently familiar. Like old friends.

Twelve is much much less than infinity. To be adrift amid twelve is a whole other predicament. You're already much closer to your goal, without a minute of practice.

But wait. Unless you're tone deaf, you can easily tell a small musical jump from a large one. So you don't need to consider all twelve notes each time. Even a wild guess will land you within a half-step or so. So you're really considering more like three notes. Not infinity. Not twelve. Three!

Like magic, ear training is transformed from an advanced skill to a matter of choosing between three candidates.

INFINITY -> TWELVE -> THREE -> ONE

That's the geometrical progression to hone in on.

There are innumerable scenarios where we feel awash in infinite possibilities. That's what "confusion" is. That's what it is to be "overwhelmed" or "ignorant". Massive, daunting unknowability is a familiar human condition. And perhaps needless, if you shift perspective.

A year after moving to a place like Portugal, one easily handles everyday encounters—ordering lunch, asking for directions, etc. I order with such casual aplomb that you might imagine I speak fluent Portuguese. But my problem is exceptions. If the waitress returns to ask—in rapid-fire Portuguese between bubblegum pops—"I'm totally sorry but the oven's on the fritz and we can't like do roast potatoes do you want a different side dish or whatever just lemme know what you want ok", I'm dead.

But the move is to recognize that you're not swimming in infinity. The waitress is not reminding you to change your car's oil. And she's not reporting Taylor Swift's latest song drop. Nor is she informing you that Komodo dragons mate asexually. The infinity in which you imagine yourself drowning is a false perception. There are probably more like twelve possibilities. Three, really, if you're reasonably focused, watch body language, and parse a few muttered, clipped, vernacular words.

Context is a Thing. It's nature's own constraining device, if you'll merely consider it.

Like every life strategy, the dealkiller for most people is the notion of paying any attention at all. The waitress must be an entirely real person for you, with recognizable and empathetic drives and processes. You need to show up and be present in reality.

The first move in any confusing situation is to fully register context, and let it calm and focus you. One can drastically trim down "infinity" to cull a manageable set of possibilities.

If you muster the clarity to register that you're in a restaurant, and she's a waitress, and something happened in the kitchen—or en route thereto—to make her reverse course and come speak words at you, then even rudimentary language skills should take you the final mile, more or less. No more than a half-step away.

I still find this planet confusing, but it feels like a tidy pool of friendly options—severely winnowed by context, which is where I focus my attention. Even heavy confusion doesn't feel like an oppression of infinity. At most, it's 12. Or, realistically, 3.