The inflationary use of a term tends to drive me in the opposite direction.
I feel compelled to examine my use of language to see where I am in danger of jumping on the mega-trends without realising it.
People seem to like to talk about something that everyone is talking about. The snob in me thinks that communication tends to become shallow when terms are used so penetratingly frequently that they can be considered meaningless again.
"Happiness" is one of them,
and as much as I am required to use this term in this competition, I want to do it just this once.
A task, that angers me.
A rather difficult task, I would say, because it is as if I were to command myself not to think of a pink elephant or not to think of the Eiffel Tower.
Of course, the exact opposite happens. Associations and synonyms run through my upper mind and every platitude, no matter how random, wants to burst out of me immediately.
Proverbs, song lyrics, greeting cards, get-well wishes, biscuits that you break open to read the saying of the day, horoscopes, wisdom that is no longer wisdom because it clogs up too much, too many, too excessively the channels that call themselves "advancement" and "growth". Even a corresponding social product was created on the basis of this unword, that of Buthan, if I remember correctly.
The Western haste and impatience with which it seeks to lean on Eastern wisdom,
oblivious to what their own culture provides them with, swearing by yoga and meditation and retreat as the true path towards enlightenment and serenity, it nevertheless misunderstands what might be meant by the notion of "a light comes to me". This light only ever comes to me and my effort to light up your torch will fail. It might not fail when I put no effort in whatsoever.
Basically, I prefer terms that I find irritating, provocative, even agonisingly incomprehensible,
precisely those that do not evoke any associations or dissociations. The foreign, the incomprehensible that I find for my part in the koans of Zen culture, the one that annoys me because "I just don't get the punch line" in it.
That's what it's all about, isn't it? When I look at something new, something different, something completely unfamiliar, unprecedented, even disgusting, brutal or ridiculous, don't I find in it what makes me see the light?
Is it possible to maintain this state? Is there a moment in time when one says: "I have now become wise"? When asked like that, the answer is not "yes". It can only be "no", because I am a human being. If I were fixed in a state of permanent wisdom, I would either be dead or crazy.
There is no fixed single state, there are flowing states, from one to the other, to and fro, fro and to. Well, the moment I say this, I want to yawn. Heard that a million of times, as it feels.
The state that man so eagerly seeks to attain, it escapes him and therein already lies wisdom. No one can laugh for hours, just as he will not be able to cry continuously for a week.
Therefore, I maintain, the different human emotional states never reach unity. The moment you feel fine with something, another one feels miserable about the very same thing.
For me, unity has also become a non-word, a linguistic horse's foot. The repetitive penetration of some terms, for me it is like a torture to which, strangely enough (!), I have become so accustomed that I no longer feel inspired to question any of it. Instead, I want to smash it.
Like an automaton, like a tape recording, I parrot what is parroted to me.
When I catch myself doing it, I immediately want to whistle myself back and do it differently.
The longing for what is called original is also in me. But the unconditional striving for originality, that's like wanting to grow a mountain by the power of my thoughts. Where I want to be precise and perfect, where I strive to eliminate chance, accident and uncertainty, I find only the familiar, the known and the used.
Words are like living bodies, aren't they?
If I lock them up in safety, de-fine them, take away their innumerable possibilities of interpretation, I build them a prison, a little cell, where I now also feel compelled to know the "right definition" of them. Where is it written? Who knows it?
But people shout at me (they don't, of course, but I write this for effect):
"We need definitions!" "You have to decide!" "Where you remain undecided, you are guilty!"
and definitions fall like word grenades, I save myself from naming them here.
In the definition lies the "finition", that is, the "end of an attempt to explain",
where you simply say something and everyone understands it the same. Far from it. It is as good as impossible to "simply understand". In written texts, in the comment section, the reader is the interpreter of what the teller tells.
Simple it becomes, when I offer you a piece of bread. Or I ask you for a refill of my drink.
Another term, which I highly dislike is "truth". I want to puke right away.
Or write a poem. Matters, in which mood I am. What would you answer if I stated that
"Truth is the invention of a liar"?
Does it sound? Of course, this excellent sentence does not stem from my average brain. I copied it from a man, whose name is Heinz von Förster.
In this text, I theorize. I also dislike theorizing a lot, yet I do it constantly. Why would I do things I dislike? Well, I can. I have the time doing so. But it's meaningless, in the end.
I would like to finish off this text with something funny and foolish. I would like to say to you that what matters are stories of real life experiences. Storytelling is something I value much more than theorizing. The latter is second hand, the first ...
Therefore, I defer to my favorite Zen anecdote.
Two monks sit silently on a mountain ridge. Then one monk says, "Look at the majesty of the mountains, the beauty of the landscape, and the elegance of the flying eagle!" The other replies, "True. I just wish you hadn't said anything."
Maybe I should have killed this very text. I don't know. You tell me.
The above is my entry for the #POB-WOTW contest (Word of the week). I went with the flow of incoming thoughts, like a freewrite without any re-editing.
Do I hope that you enjoyed it? ... Not so sure about it. Maybe enjoyment is not something I always aim directly at. Certainly I hope for engagement.
Here are the requirements and infos for the contest copied from the main article:
Contest Times
Start: (Friday @ midnight) 15/10/21
Stop: (Sunday @ midnight) 24/10/21
We're starting the contest this week a bit early. The intent is to give both authors and writers a little more breathing room.
Contest Rules
Be Creative. Push your boundaries.
Write an article that clearly uses the selected word.
Only one article per user.
Do not write about the Hive blockchain.
Do not commit plagiarism.
Use the #POB-WOTW tag if you are participating in the contest. Don't forget to use the hashtag.
If someone (not a bot) responds to you article, don't forget to ENGAGE with them!
Contest Rewards
Place first: 100 POB
Place second: 75 POB
Place third: 50 POB
Place fourth: 25 POB
Delegations may or may not be given.
Thank you, @scholaris, for running the challenge.
Picture source: Pixabay
As it is a free write flowing freely there is not just one single thread moving from start to end rather a see a central point from where various threads are coming from, and that is "the words have a popular and standard usage that you don't want to follow all the time."
We all are humans with mammalian qualities, 46 chromosomes and the power of language. That makes us all similar and fall into a single species. When I look at the human race as species, ever single person is same. But..... I am not supposed to see them as species all the time. I look and interact each person as an individual. Then, I would have to say every human is different with different facial structures, body specifications, fingre prints and of course habits and all. One thing (as in this case, categorizing human as homosapines) makes all the humans same, the other things make them all totally different and unique. Same is the case with words, the feelings attached to them, the interpretation and their usage
Words, also have a social life and and a unique individual life. In their social life they need some specific meaning so that they can be understood by all, but in their individual lives they have unique meaning of their own that cannot be understood by everyone (more good to say, by anyone). All of us have a unique experience and feelings for a particular words. I reminded of an incident. My son had to colour and alphabet. He coloured it with as many colours as he could. I looked at it and I thought "How messy!". But he was so delighted to look st it and said over and over again "how beautiful it is looking." I asked him why he coloured it with so many colours. He said "so that, it may look beautiful." In his perception beautiful is something that has many colours. I keep certainly a different interpretation and definition for beauty. Lol. We all know beauty lies in the eyes of beholder.
Back to the story, the meaning and interpretation of each single word lies within each person. I think, it largely depends on our personal experiences over the course of our lives. Experiences are unique and so our definitions of a particular word.
The reality is, there is nothing like reality. Everyone has one's own reality. What I see as green, a red- green colour blind sees as red. That's his reality. I have no reason to say that he is abnormal. What abnormal actually is. "The one who deviates from the majority". Who knows the majority is seeing the right thing. It might be the one who we call colour blind seeing the right colours and we all are deprived of that quality.
There can be a long long long debate about it, but to converge it I have to say despite all the individual meanings attached to the word, we need to share a common definition. This is to make it possible to communicate with each other. Words (along with us) have to live dual life. A life in public and a life in private.
Thanks for the invitation to this thoughtful post @erh.germany .
Hehe. I want to say something about markdown styling. If you use a justified text alignment it will raise your point on the merit grading. Lololol. We have to follow the standards of the world when we are in the world. The post for pob-wotw brings you point when you use better markdown while your other posts are not effected that much by markdown usage. (The same is the case with all the words and their meanings)
Greetings
It's an interesting deconstruction of what is going on in your mind in response to the word "happy". Happiness itself is transient. On this, we agree. I think the joy of writing to word prompts is that as a community we don't cage the words in locked up definitions, but instead we invite them to be set free. We welcome and encourage diversity of opinion and a variety of perspectives, and it is not uncommon for people to take an unfamiliar approach to that which they usually subscribe, simply to challenge themselves in genre, theme, style, and content. In the end, you too have taken a perspective, one which remains unimportant as to whether I agree with it or not, (and in this, we also have a Schrodinger's cat moment). I will say that I enjoyed the theorising and the internal debate and found merit in most of what you had to say. I !LUV ed the quote at the end ... when people feel the need to define and describe, all too often the joy and impact of the moment are lost, or at the very least significantly diluted. !PIZZA
:) thank you for this feedback on the content. I was playing with the aspect of disappointing possible readers that they won't find what they expect here. The snob in me (or, more positively, the curious one), who also has expectations about authors working the given word in a way that is unusual for me, wants to be surprised, wants to question common things and counter inflationary use and imaginations. But since I don't want to offend, I have chosen the path of naming my own emerging images and immediately discarding them.
I am not so much for moralising and explaining what it means to be happy. Rather, I think that if I want to put happiness into writing, I'd better choose the indirect way and instead of describing it, I'd rather write a poem without having to use the word "happy" even once, because the thing speaks for itself by creating happiness. But that would have been tantamount to immediate disqualification. lol
I am glad that the Zen anecdote at the end was noticed by you and basically these short lines alone would have been enough to convey my view on this subject. Of course, I could have cheated and smuggled the word in at an appropriate place. HaHa!
I'm not sure I really understood Schrödinger's Cat. The cat may or may not be dead. Right?
From your answer I interpret that you also like to challenge yourself.
Perhaps I stretched Schrodinger's cat a bit too much in taking artistic license with it ;-) What I meant is that until I give feedback to your post, there exists in your view both potentialities at the same time; that I at once agree with the perspective contained therein and that I disagree with it. If I give you feedback that suggests a leaning in both directions, neither being definitive, then both realities can exist at the same time :-) And it also matters not which is the ultimate truth, in light of our conversations last week and as you have mentioned in your post "the reader is the interpreter of what the teller tells". You will gain from your writing what you need to gain, and your readers will individually gain what they need to gain. Just to clarify: I !LUV ed your article. I thoroughly enjoy your philosophizing and deconstruction and critical analysis that you blend into your writing. !PIZZA
Thank you.
excellent. I sometimes become crazy with this. It's as if ones ability to anticipate multiple perspectives/outcomes takes on a confusing degree. I am happy, I am not alone with this. lol
I really appreciate how you put it here.
This makes it easier to not always long for agreement. Makes actually live itself easier :) And in that, agreement is achieved.
The readers interpret what the teller tells, I agree on that because I'm about to do just that. I don't know exactly what I was expecting but the article kept me stuck till the end. I understand your grievance over doing the common things, something everyone does, you want to see things differently but sadly ends up doing it the old way.
Now, you had given just the opposite of happiness with sadness on doing the popular things. Were you trying to act differently here?
:) thanks for following my invitation.
I tried a freewrite on the given word of the week, without editing. I think it's important to give that information. When I write nonstop without really giving it much thought, but do it in one run, I don't know where it'll end. This was the result of starting and ending when I had the sense "it's enough". I am not certain that I really did choose sadness, but if that is how it sounds to you, I will not argue against it :)
No, I did not try to act differently, I think I chose to open up my thought process (and be as honest als possible). If that makes sense to you?
Yeah, honestly matters a lot, I like the fact that you wrote freely
A lot of writing, with diverse thoughts and allusions that kept me reading, but in the end diverted me from what I expected to find: Happiness. But it made me happy to read you and maybe lose some time, that's good and I thank you. Good luck in the contest my friend.
I wrote about something I'm conflicted about and so you didn't find anything at the end that I already denigrated at the beginning. I had to smile because you had not given up hope, but then you were disappointed. There was no happy ending here.
Thanks for the wishes.
You went with the flow so did I. This is an obvious feelstora, you wrote based on your present mood.
It came out well.
I must commend your rich vocabulary.
Thank you, you hit the nail, it was a feelstora (interesting term, never heard it before:) I follow my mood when I write. What comes up comes down on the "paper sheet".
I am happy (LOL) that you went with the flow. Appreciated.
I deliberately used the term because it appears that you have a thing against overused words. 😂😂😂
HaHa! Totally, so! Gimme some more underused words and we create a story from it, shall we?
Wolters was killing me. I couldn't stand the guy. The way he stood at the photocopier, lopsided, sluggish, sad. Man, Wolters, I said to him, be a little happy for once. I laughed at him, but what did the guy do? He got happy. He started laughing, flirted with half the department, soon he was promoted and nobody realised that he only had me to thank for that. Now he's the happiest man ever and me? I have to wait until someone tells me to be happy.
LOL
Talking to myself and providing an anecdote I once wrote for preservation
PIZZA Holders sent $PIZZA tips in this post's comments:
@samsmith1971(7/20) tipped @erh.germany (x2)
Learn more at https://hive.pizza.