Making it up as we go - it’s our intentions that matter

Last year I read “The History of Coined Words” by Ralph Keyes. He tells the stories about words we use today. Some words were meant as jokes but then turned into words and fields we know today (ie. scientist). Some were meant for degradation and then used by others to empower themselves (ie. suffragette). Some were words used to explain a whole different idea that turned into worldwide phenomenons themselves (ie. paradigm).

The book also mentioned that there are overused words that have since lost all (and their former) meaning. I feel that is the case with a lot of the positivity/motivational/coaching quotes.

It’s freeing - we made ALL of this up and we can remake ALL of it up again.

And it’s petrifying - that means WE have the responsibility to make it ALL up again.

That means we have to decide what we want while living with what we don’t want and hope that our best guesses get us where we want to go.

If it happens with words, we can do it with ourselves, with our worlds. New names, new jobs, new fields. Someone had to create it.

Anyone can create a new title, a new idea. That title is just as valid as anything else made up in previous generations. Others may tell you “no” but over time, it is no different than anyone else who ever created a word or a field that now exists and we just assume has always been common knowledge (it hasn’t).

So there is some truth to some of these statements, be who you really are and it will all come. Think what you want and it will follow.

However, the key is persisting with it. In that persistence, you may have to let everyone around you think you are crazy, stupid, mean, ignorant, disagreeable, lost your mind, in denial or some other version of a combination of all of them (and more). We can argue it “The word works, it makes sense to us! Everyone else just has to catch up!”

But that’s not how the world works. (See the United States of America right now - on both sides.)

I get into a lot of trouble using words my way (what I THINK they mean) vs. the world’s way (what others or a book thinks they mean). Supposedly this happens a lot to those who read. And as someone who reads more than she does anything else, this has given me some trouble. Besides mis-speaking “hors d'oeuvres” and “colonel”, I really never understood that “Geezus” was well…”Jesus.”

I read “Geezus” therefore I say “Geezus.” In my mind, it in no way ties to “Jesus.” I don’t care that they sound the same, my intention is Geezus. Which to my elementary school mind was a great word that is fun to say. (Even when I was young I wanted to sound like an old lady.)

As I was being raised to be a “good Catholic girl” (whatever that means, we can unpack those three words of nonsense in another post), I was caught and stuck in a fight trying to explain that I wasn’t taking the Lord’s name in vain.

I was saying what I saw as a made up word. (And as someone who has a Z in her last name, everyone else thought my last name wasn’t a real word either, so funny that I thought the same rule would apply to other words).

It didn’t. Especially not to a word made up that was supposed to be a “not as offensive way” to take the “Lord’s name” in vain when most of the world I was living heard it as swearing. I lost that battle as a child. I still fight it as an adult. (For some reason, I can’t say “Geezus” but you can steal and kill other people, okay great, glad we are on the same page…)

It never even occurred to me or crossed my mind that “Geezus” and “Jesus” were related (as a girl drinking all the kool-aid of Catholic school).

I can imagine it is exactly how people feel when they create a word, a title, a song, a piece of art that gets COMPLETELY misunderstood and interpreted, as tons of people (who don’t know them or their intention) jump down their throat and cancel them.

Who's to say who is right and who is wrong? Because we are ALL making it up as we go. SIGH

Intention matters.

Can we feel it in the words, in the art, in the air? Is that why when someone says the “wrong thing” we know they meant the best and we can let it go? Or when someone says “I’m sorry” but you know they really aren’t so you don’t really accept their apology (because it’s not an actual apology) so you don’t ever let it go?

My saying “Geezus” as a child thinking it is a fun word is different from an adult with a gun in his hand sneering the word in front of a Baptist church. Most people can understand that a child doesn’t know and understand and that man likely is not there for the service.

Because if we can create words, cancel words, and change it all up - what do we have to go on except intention?

If we are making it all up - it’s a huge relief and a huge responsibility. We do live in a world, with societies, cultures, laws, rules, political parties and religions. That’s the trade off of making it up for yourself, you have to wait until everyone else comes along with you. Or accept that you can’t partake in “that” part of society. Or that you have to create your own.

Pretending that freedom has no responsibility or consequences is what can get us in trouble.

Yes, “be whoever you want to be.” “Be the change you want to be.” “Create the world you want to live in.” “Think it up so it can exist.” All of these.

But do this with full intention and full knowledge. Know that it is not a magic wand, but another force of society that is competing with everything else. And if everything else is going one way, do not delude yourself that if you build it they will come.

You control what you make up AND with your intention. You decide how to move and accomplish what you want within the current world. Just know and understand those around you, what they intend and the consequences. We get to do this because others have borne the consequences and we may have to be those people for the ones in the future.