True Change

Words! They just don’t mean the same things anymore.

Even the words good and goodness have trains of baggage, gathering and trailing garbage and gems of meanings that are so nuanced as to be designer boutiques. They’re situationally meaningful but for general use, not especially applicable.  

Perhaps, I may suggest two simple swap outs for now, since most of the words like those two g words (and, yes, the main god word, as well as the L word-love, etc, etc…you know, the catch-all words…the ones that each have their own junk drawer of meanings which we have to quickly sort through whenever one of these words pop up in conversation…those big words are like a fully, loaded baked potato from the POTATO Factory of restaurants, so fully loaded, in fact, that misunderstandings are practically baked right in). We might-could try (I know, English schoolmarms relax please…go with this flow), we perhaps would consider employing some less moral or ethically imposed upon us verbiage. I’ll give you a sample of two: let’s try describing our feelings and our thoughts as 

sour                or/and               sweet

rather than the ones we currently use so frequently such as:

And, to be sure, there are ranges and inflections to these binary-looking choices that blur the heck out of every clear distinction. I suspect that’s what our thinking is attempting to do, to muddy the waters while claiming we need to trust it to clear everything up. The current words we use are behaving like transition lenses. They change in every situation, even with the same person in the same conversation, we flip meanings, qualify our particular inflections, depending upon how much light we want to let in.

The two words, sweet and sour, have clear emoji expressions that even the emotionally shut down can recognize, without feeling judged or without claiming that one is better than the other. The two are very different and ez to distinguish without having to think about it. Back to the basics, we seem to have forgotten. 

Something sour isn’t bad and something sweet isn’t good. Those are preferences. If I want to get to know you, I take notice of your preferences. If I want to caringly interact with you, I explore those preferences lovingly. Letting fresh air in to a stale room, isn’t any more complicated than finding the window that isn’t nailed shut.

If I watch your expressions as we chat, your face will pucker, sort of scrunch in a bit, when some subject or statement strikes a sourish note on your emotional palate. And in the next moment, if we’re allowed to continue talking, I can see you relax as you sense that no criticism is headed your way for a sour reaction, only open-minded caring and curiosity. You almost smile.

We can’t force change.

We can choose to love.

And it’s that choice to try again, and again, to believe in the love within us and between us…this is what allows the love to change us.

As well as everything else.