Words

One of the more recent things that I’ve come across has been a TED talk about the principles of Self-Mastery. During the presentation, a story was shared that resonated with me and has helped me figure out a few things about myself. The story goes: A young man lived at the base of the mountain, and one day he decided that he would travel to the top of the mountain to see what it was like. When he was ready, he started to climb the mountain and along the way he met a traveler. Being a curious man, he asked the traveler if he had been to the top and what he saw. The traveler then gave him his experience and what he was able to see at the top of the mountain. The young man thought about what was shared and concluded that he didn’t like what the traveler had mentioned and would continue to ask more travelers along his journey. After visiting with 30 more travelers, the young man was content with the information that those travelers had provided to him about the top of the mountain and went back home without ever making it to the top. The presenter went on to mention that the one thing that is impossible to teach is clarity, or the experience that a person can have as an individual. The only way someone can truly know something is by climbing to the top of the mountain and seeing for themselves what is really there. 

Clarity is what I hope to share with you all as you read through my many thoughts and insights. But of course, you can only really achieve a state of clarity on your own. Don’t just take my word for it. So what I suppose I really hope for, is to invite you to seek out clarity on your own accord. 

When I was younger, one of the earliest fascinations that I can recall having was in elementary school in conversations with my fellow classmates and friends. I remember one instance where we, normally a few of us, would have a conversation and over the span of a few minutes try to trace our steps back to how we ended up on the topic we were currently on. For example, the conversation would start off talking about the clock, transitioning to how the numbers would remind us of our math homework, to how much we hated homework, to what we would rather be doing instead of homework, to our favorite hobbies, families, funny stories etc. At the end of the funny story, we would all stop and look at each other and say, “Wait, how did we end up talking about this?” Sometimes we were able to remember and other times not so much. I was pretty fascinated by these conversations and was fairly good at tracing back the conversation. 

I didn’t really have an experience of personal clarity and tracing things back until a conditional environment that I was in during my later teen years. Some background, I have a personal belief that we are all products of our environments. These environments have so many different variables that it will take some time to cover them all, but ultimately these environments are what help influence and shape our behavior as we develop throughout our lifespans. My environment consisted of a mother and father, a typical American and Utah influenced family, a fairly dense population of the religion of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and a high percentage of caucasian influences. I grew up in a loving Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint home which led me to the personal experience I have previously mentioned. As a member of the church, I decided to go on a mission. A mission is a two year commitment that my family and I personally pay for in order to share the same beliefs to others who are interested. As a missionary, you are paired with another young adult who committed to the same decision as you, and you are with your companion for a certain amount of time before transferring to different areas throughout your designated mission. Over a two year time span, you can have many different companions and move around to different areas. While on my mission, my individual development reached a crossroads with the diversified environment that I was exposed to. This experience was the very first time I had experienced any real outside world experience, without the influence of my family being physically nearby, and needing to think for myself. Missionary life was strategically structured to help focus on time management and efficiency, my morning schedule consisted of exercising, personal study, companionship study, and then plans for teaching the rest of the day. While doing a personal study, I was looking into a word that wanted to know more about. I had a student version of the webster’s dictionary handy and was able to see that the definition that I was expecting wasn’t at all what the word had truly meant. I was so confused and really wanted to know why my expected definition wasn’t the correct dictionary definition, que the tracing back ability from my childhood. Upon further inspection, the dictionary I was using actually had an origin of the word I was looking at and that’s where I started my adventure with words. 

Words, the things we use for communication everyday in so many ways and shapes and forms became one of the key puzzle pieces to my experience in life. How often do you actually think about the words you are about to use when you are having a conversation? Do you think about how your words will affect others? Do you actually know what the words you are choosing to use mean? Where did words come from? So it began my quest for knowing what words meant. I started with my understanding of where the English language came from, it’s traced back to ancient languages like Latin, Hebrew, Sumerian etc. I figured that if I can find out the origin of the word I was looking into I would be able to understand its clear initial meaning. One of the very first words that I remember researching is, comfortable or comfort. When someone wants to get comfortable, they find the softest things or the most quiet of places to relax and say that they are comfortable. In fact the dictionary definition of comfort as a verb is to soothe or to make physically comfortable, and the definition of comfortable is producing or affording physical comfort, support, or ease. BUT do you know what the origin of the word comfort is?  Latin confortāre to strengthen, equivalent to con- + -fortāre verbal derivative of Latin fortis strong. In other words, comfort truly means to fortify or strengthen. What happened? Why is it so different in meaning? Well some ideas are that the translation of some words into our current English meaning might be slightly different or perhaps lost so we decided to pick the closest related word? I don’t really actually know, but I do know that there is a disconnect with words and what they mean. When I came across this realization, I concluded that I really needed to know what the true meaning of things were. The clarity that I felt was very comforting 😉  and reassuring so much so, that I was motivated to continue on this adventure of clarity and true meaning. 

For future posts, you may see me reference the origin of a word just to help provide further clarification of certain topics that I hope to post about in the future. 

Do you really know the meaning of the words you use?

I have linked the TED Talk in the text above. Thank you for reading!