Can you explain a hard idea using only the ten-hundred most used words? One well-known try is “Up-Goer Five“. You can try it yourself here. Here, I try to explain my job (land-to-other-lands-thoughts-and-ideas-person):
Very few people have a job that is like mine. It is quite hard to explain, even using words that are not the ten hundred most-used.
Almost every land has a group of people who gently control it (or try their best to). These people are usually picked by the other people who live in the land. Every few years, there is a huge picking day and the people who live in the land must pick their land-control-people again. Not every person likes this way of doing things, but if you try to control the land without being picked by the other people then the police will probably stop you.
Now, these land-control-people must help the people who live in the land (this is why they are picked). They do this many different ways. One way is by being interested in other lands. You may not think that other lands are very interesting to people who have to help their own land, but they are. The other lands might want to buy things that your land makes, or let people go to your land to have fun. Sometimes, land-control-people are interested in other lands because they like them better and want to take them over. This is a very bad way of doing things.
To make it easier to deal with other lands, the land-control-people build offices in those lands. These offices are not like other offices. The people who work in them work for the land-control-people, even though they live in the other lands. They make sure that the land-control-people’s plans for the other lands are carried out well, and tell the land-control-people about the things that are going on in the other lands. Some of these land-to-other-lands-people change lands and offices every few years, but some stay in the same office and land for as long as they want to.
I live in a big, cold land at the top of the world (the one where the people are nice and say “sorry” quite a lot), but I work for the land-control-people in a small, cool land near lots of other small, cool lands (the one that has water on all sides and is known for having lots of rain, big red buses and GREAT thoughts and ideas). I do not have to change lands and offices every few years like some of the land-to-other-lands-people here do.
Many people in big-red-bus-land are really good at having important thoughts and ideas (I said this above). They usually work in very big, grown-up schools with many other thoughts-and-ideas-people, and young people come to the grown-up-schools to learn from them. As well as helping the young people to learn, the thoughts-and-ideas-people think about very hard problems and have ideas that might make the world a better place. This is very important work, and so the land-control-people and grown-up-schools give them money to do it.
Although the thoughts-and-ideas-people work very hard, they can’t do everything by themselves. Often, the thoughts and ideas are better if thoughts-and-ideas-people from other lands can help. Sometimes the thoughts-and-ideas-people from different lands already know each other and can work together, but often they do not.
The land-control-people in big-red-bus-land know that thoughts and ideas are very important, and that they can help the land. They also know that thoughts and ideas are often better if thoughts-and-ideas-people from different lands can work together. They also know that they have many land-to-other-lands offices and people in other lands. They decided to do something about these facts, and set up some people to be “land-to-other-lands-thoughts-and-ideas-people”. This is my job.
As a land-to-other-lands-thoughts-and-ideas-person, I talk to many thoughts-and-ideas-people in this big, cold land at the top of the world. I also talk to many thoughts-and-ideas-people and land-control-people back in big-red-bus-land. I try to find ways that the thoughts-and-ideas-people can work together to get better thoughts and ideas. This means that I have to know a lot about thoughts and ideas, land control and the two lands that I work with.
I am part of a small team in this land, and a bigger team across the whole world. Together, we help big-red-bus-land by helping it to get better thoughts and ideas. If you are a thoughts-and-ideas-person and you want to work with thoughts-and-ideas-people from big-red-bus-land then just ask your nearest land-to-other-lands-thoughts-and-ideas-person!