I remember working with my grandfather in Mexico. It wasn’t easy. He knew what he wanted, and he figured you should, too. And he didn’t suffer fools gladly.

“I need you to dig a ditch for a footer here, so we can pour later this afternoon. I want it deep, but not too deep. I don’t want to waste concrete.”

“How deep does it need to be?”

“How deep does a footer need to be for a cinder block wall?”

“See, I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“Don’t get smart with me. Make it as deep as your elbow.”

“As deep as my elbow with my hand flat or extended?”

“Extended. Do you know how to dig a footer?”

“Not really, if you want to know the truth. I’ve never dug one before. How wide should it be?”

“Go cut alfalfa. I’ll get somebody else to do this.”

It’s not easy, is it? Abstractions need to be made solid and specific for us to understand.

If you ask me to feed your dog while you go visit your parents in Catalina, and I say “How much?” and you say, “A bowlful is fine”—I still need more information, don’t I? A bowlful is an abstraction if I don’t have more information.

What kind of bowl is it? How big a bowl are we talking about? Is it the dog’s bowl, or a bowl from the cupboard?

Bowls vary in size and volume. To tell me I need to feed your dog a bowlful of food is not to provide me with sufficient information.

Humans typically make sense of abstractions by analogy.

“Smaller than a bread box. Big as a house. Quiet as a mouse. Faster than a speeding bullet. Dainty as an elephant. Dumb as a bag of hammers.”

We need concrete information.

Let’s be honest, abstractions are difficult, aren’t they? You can say, “I love you” a million times. But after having said it the million and first time, your beloved is still firmly in the realm of the reasonable to say, “Fine. Show me.”

“But I just told you—like a million times!”

“Yeah, that’s nice. Now do the laundry. We don’t have any alfalfa, or I’d tell you to go cut that.”