Thank you for this, Rob. I'm starting my day (in Thailand) with it now, along with another great thought that your prompt brought me back to, from David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement speech. Same idea. Different focal point:
"Most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
"Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it."
I would love a word for the moment in a book (or movie, play, etc.) when the title of the work finally appears in the text word!
I thought about this sensation for the first time when I read “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston. The moment when a character (maybe the narrator?) said that line-- “and their eyes were watching God.”-- it packed SUCH a punch that I wish I had a word for that!
I would like to have a word for the sound of your car hitting (or being hit by) some hard object in a small accident– another car, a stone barrier, a big tree. This sound, while not very loud, has the ability to penetrate your entire being, and it has this terrible aftertaste of recognition of inevitable damage with all following consequences. Brrr …
I'd love to know the / a word for the following phenomenon: when you travel somewhere your luggage is full and as you travel back you expect it to be less full, as you gave away presents, used up product and whatnot. But due to different circumstances, the luggage takes up at least the same amount of room as in the beginning, if not more!
How about a new word to cover off that point in time between hitting the stop button on an electric shower and the water stopping - particularly on a cold day…
I love this, Rob. We do take THINGS for granted, and we are too quick to complain, or be distainful about something we don’t understand. I have to assume, like you said, that a lot of thought went into something that I’ve never thought about. Also, what went wrong that prompted a sign, or a rule or a policy? Something did.
What's the Question?
Thank you for this, Rob. I'm starting my day (in Thailand) with it now, along with another great thought that your prompt brought me back to, from David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement speech. Same idea. Different focal point:
"Most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
"Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it."
—David Foster Wallace
https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
I would love a word for the moment in a book (or movie, play, etc.) when the title of the work finally appears in the text word!
I thought about this sensation for the first time when I read “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston. The moment when a character (maybe the narrator?) said that line-- “and their eyes were watching God.”-- it packed SUCH a punch that I wish I had a word for that!
I would like to have a word for the sound of your car hitting (or being hit by) some hard object in a small accident– another car, a stone barrier, a big tree. This sound, while not very loud, has the ability to penetrate your entire being, and it has this terrible aftertaste of recognition of inevitable damage with all following consequences. Brrr …
I'd love to know the / a word for the following phenomenon: when you travel somewhere your luggage is full and as you travel back you expect it to be less full, as you gave away presents, used up product and whatnot. But due to different circumstances, the luggage takes up at least the same amount of room as in the beginning, if not more!
How about a new word to cover off that point in time between hitting the stop button on an electric shower and the water stopping - particularly on a cold day…
Thud-whap or bang-ladesh.
I love this, Rob. We do take THINGS for granted, and we are too quick to complain, or be distainful about something we don’t understand. I have to assume, like you said, that a lot of thought went into something that I’ve never thought about. Also, what went wrong that prompted a sign, or a rule or a policy? Something did.
Interesting thought. Thank you, Rob.
Thanks for the shout-out, Rob!