The Importance of Exportant

The word important is… well, important. We use it quite a bit in the English language, and the word holds a certain status.

Sure, there are synonyms out there, but try them out in your mind now.

Main. Chief. Principal. Foremost. Key.

These are similar, but they don’t quite have the gravitas and meaning that important does. In today’s MC Escher moment, the word is exactly what it means.

The word we use today derives from the Latin word importans, and you might already have an idea of its meaning if you think about how similar that is to the modern English word import.

The first part of that word—im—simply means in or into.

Port comes from the root word portare, which means to carry.

So, when you import something, you’re carrying it in. That’s pretty much exactly how we use the word today, and it traces directly back more than two thousand years. I’m generally always amused when we talk about linguistic drift over the centuries, when a meaning of a word completely changes, but it might be even more amazing when a word’s meaning stays intact for so long.

Therefore, if something is important, it is worthy of being brought in. This is more conceptual than literal these days, with ideas being the thing that’s ultimately allowed in to your mind. If we say something is important, it means we allow it into our minds.

This brings me to my main gripe today: why don’t we use the word exportant?

After all, we already know that portare gave us port, and we know that im- means the same thing as in. Even more so, we have the word export today to act as the counterpart to the word import.

Shouldn’t exportant be an everyday word too? While important means something you want to bring into your mind, surely there are things you would like to get out of your mind.

Perhaps the reason we don’t have this word has to do with the way our minds work. Bringing in a new idea can be incredibly easy, as long as you have the right mindset. You can hear something one moment, and then in the next moment, you’re turning that thing around in your mind, playing with the new idea. You’ve imported the concept into your brain, where it now takes up residence.

Getting an idea out of your mind, on the other hand, can be quite the challenge. Sometimes, this is because our very identities are married to the ideas we bring in, so we tie ourselves to our beliefs. This isn’t all bad, mind you! Viewing yourself as kind, generous, and open to new ideas is a very productive mindset, and imagining that these concepts are intertwined with who you are can be incredibly powerful.

On the flip side, there’s a huge danger in making limiting statements about yourself. If you’re prone to saying something like, “I’m not much of a math person,” or “I’m terrible with foreign languages,” you can actually talk yourself into being that person.

Negative self-talk is among the most destructive behaviors I know, and it’s everywhere. That’s largely because it’s so difficult to unwire yourself once you’ve imported that idea.

Maybe the difficulty in exporting an idea from your mind goes a long way toward explaining why we don’t use exportant today, but now I kind of want to take it back.

Should we do this?