You know? The older I get, it seems the harder I try to learn. To gather information. To wonder.
Which brings me to a word I love.
Glean.
It rhymes with clean, which is right up my alley.
Anyway, I just happened to think. Maybe that will be the new name for my next blog:
The Gleaning Lady.
Glean is just one of those good words.
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In its earliest sense, to glean meant to gather leftover grain in a field after the harvesters had finished. Collecting.
That’s right. Back, a long, long time ago, poor families would walk through harvested fields collecting the stalks and ears of grain that had been missed. This practice dates back thousands of years and is even mentioned in the Bible. If you look up the Book of Ruth, you can see where Ruth gleans barley in the fields of Boaz.
Over time, the meaning expanded. Today, glean usually means to collect or discover something little by little, often from scattered sources.
Learn. Collect. Gather. Cull. Obtain.
I think I like it so much because “glean” implies that the information isn’t handed to us directly. We have to search for it carefully. We have to observe things closely. Or maybe it is a bit like solving a little mystery. We have to put together small pieces into a larger understanding.
It seems a bit more difficult than when we just “learn” something. Somewhere in between “learning” and “deducing.” Maybe.
Anyway, that’s my good word for the day.
I hope all of you glean something good along your way this day.
And if not, maybe try cleaning something. That’s always good too.
Like your toaster. It’s been getting full with an awful lot of crumbs in the bottom lately.
Maybe you can glean them out of there.
Gleaning makes you feel less crumby.
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“I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.” — Vincent van Gogh
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“Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.” — Anton Chekhov
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“The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.” — Albert Einstein
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“Every day is a chance to learn something new.” — Paul Rose
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