Why Shame Stifles Creativity and How to Unwrap the Gift of Curiosity
Over the past week, Cindy and I have been staying in the Marais district of Paris, wandering around, living like locals. Perhaps, because I have more time on my hands than usual, when something has come up that I didn’t understand, I’ve taken the time to either look it up or to think it through until I do understand it. Just one small example is seeing the word “bienvenue” everywhere and realizing that I din’t know what it meant.
It turns out that “bien” means good and that “venue” means arrival; so “bienvenue” means welcome. I’m sure that I learned this in my four years of French study that I completed when I was in my teens. Also, amazingly, the English word “venue” is clearly right there, unchanged, as its original French word “venue”: the feminine past particle form of the French verb venir, to come. It’s a French verb that congealed into an English noun.
We’ve been thinking a lot about French words. As we were about to cross the street, my friend Dago, who is French, suggested that we “traverse,” and it led to a discussion of this French word. While very commonly used in French, “traverse” is a much less frequently used word in English, tending to form part of a more educated and extensive vocabulary. We discussed how after the Norman invasion of Briton, the ruling class spoke primarily French and…
