I anticipated heavy traffic last Wednesday as everyone was rushing to get out of Manila. Rather than allow myself to be stressed out, I saw it as an opportunity. I can listen to an audio book during the long drive. I picked Malcolm Gladwell’s new book entitled “What the dog saw”. In a nutshell, “What the Dog Saw” is about understanding what goes on inside another person’s head. Gladwell’s inspiration for the book title is in fact a dog whisperer. A dog whisperer named Malone can calm the angriest animals with the touch of his hands.
What goes inside this dog whisperer’s head is what drove Gladwell to write the piece. But later on, he thought of an even more interesting question - when the dog whisperer does his magic, what goes on inside the dog’s head? What we really wanna know, Gladwell says is, “what the dog saw”.
This getting into other people’s head actually starts when we’re 2 years old. Ever wondered why 2-years old is called the Terrible Two? Because toddlers think that if they like something (e.g. milk), other people must like it too. They haven’t yet grasped the idea that what is inside their mommy and daddy’s heads is different from theirs and that of everyone else’s head. They get agitated when they begin to discover and realize that something that gives them pleasure may not necessarily give their parents pleasure.
And here’s another new thing I picked up from the book - a different perspective on the definition of good writing. After reading something we don't agree with, we usually react negatively or blurt out “I don’t buy this” just because we don’t agree with the article.
Gladwell says, there is no reason to get angry. Good writing, he defines, does not succeed or fail on its strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse of someone else’s head even if the end result is that you conclude someone else’s head is not a place you would really like to be. :)
Gladwell says, there is no reason to get angry. Good writing, he defines, does not succeed or fail on its strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse of someone else’s head even if the end result is that you conclude someone else’s head is not a place you would really like to be. :)
