Different Names for the Same Thing

Words are a funny thing period.

I went out with one of my best guy friends from college. He and his girlfriend and I went out including drinks, dinner and some dancing (quite the adventure). As I'm getting ready to leave he pulled me aside to get my thoughts on her and I poised the same question back to him. He immediately started  squirming and I could tell he wanted to say something.

He wiggled his way around telling me what he wanted about her using words to work around what he really wanted to say. It really made me think. As a lover of words, words are a funny thing. They have a power we don't always realize because once words leave our mouths, they become a real thing (it's true using it?). The right words from the right people can make your day, just as the wrong words from the right people can break your day.

Words can make us feel comfortable and they can either protect us (thus my sarcastic everyday dialogue) or they can make us feel vulnerable. One of the ways they make us feel comfortable is by allowing us to put different names to the same thing (sometimes in phrases and explanations). This way if we don't get the response we're looking for it's much easier to walk our way or explain our way out of it so we don't always have to really put ourselves out there.

This is our security blanket, because if we said what we really meant, we can't take the words back. They're out in the atmosphere and we have no control of other people's feelings or reactions to them. I also came to the conclusion that in some matters I do this as well. I stick a toe in to test the waters( work with the word play) , instead of just doing a cannonball ( saying exactly the things I want).  ( An interesting comparison for someone who can't swim, the irony is not lost on me).

Now for someone like me who says exactly what they're thinking 98% of the time this may be hard to believe but there's still that 2% where I safeguard myself as well.

I feel like I also need to take more of my own advice ....  As he was working his way around his words I looked him in the eye and said " today junior, you know what you want to say. What's the worst that could happen."

And it's true. If we're working our way around something we want to say, what good does that do us? We still want to say it, it just tiptoes around the topic.

Why not jump and say what you want. Call a spade a spade. As I told my friend last night (and as I
need to remember) ...


What is the worst that could happen?  If we don't say what we want how will we ever get it?

Make A Wish

It's a staple at every birthday party but why do we only say it once a year ? 

In my opinion there are two bones that are quite important to a person, but you will never see them on an anatomy chart: your figurative backbone and your wishbone. I saw a quote on this today and couldn't have disagreed with it more.

"Never let your wishbone replace your backbone" , but I ask why can't they coexist? Wishes are a funny thing ... We put so many rules around something that we are taught as children are very abstract, amazing things. They can be as simple as I wish it wasn't raining everyday for the next two weeks to as complicated and messy as I wish my mom was still here today. But... When did they become such terrible things? Wishes are the differentiator between people. We all have wishes, but it's the imagination and drive behind a wish that makes a wish a reality. It's the difference between those who talk the talk but don't deliver, and those who both say and do.

Wishes are the best part of reality because they tell you a lot about a person that you may have not known before because a wish isn't something you're supposed to talk about. It's one of those ideas that starts in the "do not discuss with others" part of your mind where I think some of the greatest thought processes in history have come from. So I say you're right don't replace your backbone with your wishbone, make your wishes happen because you have a backbone.

So that next big project or marketing idea, that travel plan, that anything why not start with your wishbone instead of your backbone?

I say everyday you should say to yourself ... Make a wish

Odds

Sometimes they're for you and sometimes they're against you, but in my opinion the odds play a larger role in our lives than we give them credit for.

We always hear "What are the odds of that happening" and typically we view them as a bad thing. A big fan of the discovery channel and nat geo I compare this to the typical odds I see on there: the odds getting attacked by a tiger shark (shark week is a national holiday for me), the odds of getting stuck in a tsunami and so on and so fourth.

BUT what if we looked at odds from a different point.

There are some odds that are a given (not to all, but generally speaking) what are the odds I'm going to have my morning coffee, or go to work every morning (you could set your watch to the fact that these will happen), and there are some odds that are a shoot for the stars, lightening strikes twice kind of odds.

I've realized its the odds that make life exciting. Maybe its the things that are against the odds that we really look forward to, the things we appreciate because we never saw them coming.

But hey...  what are the odds of that happening right?

Unexpectations

This morning in church the Father said something in his sermon that got me thinking. When we plan, God laughs.

In my experiance this has been the most frusterating thing for someone like me. I make lists, charts and plans. I like to think that if I have all of my ducks in a row everything will go like I have planned and these plans will play themselves out as I have mapped out in my always busy brain. Plans are my safety net.

The kicker? This is furthest from the truth. Looking back, there have been things that have happened completely opposite of my detailed planning.Things that for better or for worse have impacted the course I had imagined myself on.

The kicker part 2? Deviations to your plans always seem to happen when everything is on course and then this something comes out of nowhere and blows them out of the water. On one side of this, if its negative change of plans it can be a whirlwind, but if it is a positive wrench in the system, it makes you wonder. And sometimes you can't define if it's postive or negative.

I think part of it is that plans bring expectations (how your mind plays out the ideal situation.) Expectations aren't a bad thing, but with plans you sometimes go through the motions with your basic expectaions. But, when plans are broken it's unexpectated, with this comes unexpecations (not a word I know but stick with me) that allow us to see and experiance things that may be scary, but at the same time pretty damn amazing and interesting.

Maybe one thing they have told me is right... Always expect the expectations, or in my experiance "hold and tight because you can't plan for the unexpectations"

Remission

Temporary relief ... from disease or pain

After fighting for two years, a ten pound tumor and cervical cancer later we got the news that my Mom had entered remission. Even after this declaration from a team of certified specialists, we still worried and the previous shock from the two years prior stuck with us all. We could try and forget about it, but we all knew that each one of us had some sort of fear and damage from everything we had undergone. 

She spoke at a survivors dinner, her hair had started to grow back into a Twiggy curly pixie cut, and slowly life was returning to normal (whatever that means). But life doesn't owe us anything nor (as previously mentioned) is it fair.

I was two hours away experiencing my freshmen year in college. My mom had met another one of her goals: to be there to move me in, and send her daughter onto her next phase in life. I returned home before winter break and my Stepdad and Mom said we needed to talk. Immediately I knew. We had had this talk before, with the same tone, same setting it was the worse case of Deja Vous a person could experience. The cancer had come back, and had settled in her brain. I felt sick. That deep down sick to my stomach, but we beat once, so why couldn't we do it again? Something in me knew that this time was different. 

I feel like from every traumatic experience in our lives we make it through and experience remission, a temporary relief from pain. We may feel like we have made it through, but all it takes is a song or image or something that brings us back to that exact moment, and it all becomes real again. Even after the remissions in our lives, many times the experience's will continue to somehow effect us or in my case, shape our paths in life. From this, we have the choice of learning and growing from these negative experiences or to let them bring us down. 

I chose to grow.

Photo Credit: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Love-Life-333602435