A recursive essay

You’re reading this subtitle

“What’s a recursive essay?” you’re wondering. You thought the title of this post was intriguing, or at least confusing, so you clicked on it. You’re slightly amused because that last sentence described your thought process — and so does this one.

You’re starting to understand what this essay is all about: not the recursion of a mathematical function into itself, but of you into yourself. Or maybe recursion of the essay into itself? You’re not exactly sure, but you’re definitely beginning to get the flavor of it. You think the idea makes for a good gimmick, but you’re not sure how far it can go. “How much can I really get out of reading my own thoughts back to myself?” you’re wondering.

You’re also wondering how a post like this one can possibly work for everyone: surely we all think different thoughts when we read a piece of text—so these sentences can’t really be “one-size-fits-all” in nature. And of course, you realize that they don’t have to be, at least not perfectly. One or two of these sentences have already missed the mark in your case, but it hasn’t prevented you from getting three paragraphs deep into this post.

Or make that four. That sentence slightly amused you. You’re realizing that some sentences are more likely to accurately capture your thought process than others, because they’re based on an experience that all readers share: by definition, if you were reading the sentence “Or make that four”, you had already reached the fourth paragraph of this post. So it wasn’t revealing some deep insight about your thought process, it was just a little game of logic.

But you have to admit that some of these sentences did work surprisingly well. Some may have caught you slightly off-guard. At some point during this essay, you’ve had a thought occur to you: maybe my inner thoughts aren’t all that unique. Maybe you have more in common with the average reader than you might think — or care to admit.

The idea that your thoughts aren’t unique to you makes you a bit uncomfortable, even if it’s somewhat amusing to have it pointed out to you. But you see the truth in it.

You weren’t thinking about comedians, but you are now. You weren’t thinking about how comedians prove to us every day that our inner thoughts (and some of the thoughts we’re most embarrassed about having) are actually shared by most of the people around us, but you are now. You’re thinking of comedy differently, and about what it means to laugh — to admit some intimate detail about our thought process to ourselves and to others.

You weren’t thinking about teaching but now you are. You’re wondering why I’m bringing up teaching — maybe teachers and comedians have something in common, and that’s why I’m doing it? That must be the reason: why else would he write the sentence I just read? You’re thinking that maybe what the best teachers and the best comedians have in common is exactly what this essay is actually about: empathy. You’re thinking about what it means to teach well, how it makes learning effortless because it introduces new ideas only when you’re ready for them — when you’ve practically thought of them already yourself. Just like a good joke: an idea that you’ve already had, but that you’re given permission to think out loud just because it was presented to you by someone else.

That’s all I have to say. You found this ending abrupt.