Day 3,029 — Still Thinking — with a PICTURE from COLORADO V (17.5)
I was thinking yesterday how much we all can connect to words in a negative or positive way that is usually independent of what the literal word means.
I work with this guy who has always tried to be heavier, but he has been thin his whole life. I said something about him being skinny, and he said how much that word hurts his feeling. He was not being overdramatic about it, but he talked about how people used the word to him before, and he still thinks about being a young kid trying to be accepted and being teased / known as the “skinny guy.”
I told him truthfully that if anyone ever called me skinny no matter what they meant, I would probably take it as a compliment.
I know this might seem obvious to many of you reading this, but I don’t know if I have ever fully appreciated how we can personalize words to have very concrete meanings that connect to parts of our lives.
The only word that is probably like that for me is “weird,” because I can still remember how kids would say “weird,” when they were talking about me..
I am not trying to be dramatic about it. I only really thought about it this morning. To me it reminds me of being a little kid who was excited to share something and feeling rejected and hurt when the person didn’t get it or was confused. I know it is unfair of me to assume that is what people mean when they call me weird now.
I learned in this reflection how much I can project a negative intention because of word choice that is personal and specific to my experience. Happy running! Today was another muggy one for sure.
I have noticed how much we put our own personal experience into a lot of our word choices and how we perceive the words that others use. I think of big concept words like 'love' or 'god' and how those words often mean very different things, yet in conversation we tend to imagine that we are talking about the same thing. Even when it's close there is a lot of nuisance in those word's use.
ReplyDeletePersonally with 'weird', it was used in a derogatory way toward me as long as I can remember. But I have chosen to interpret it as a compliment despite the intention. I think of weird as more interesting than the usual.
The 'love' and 'god' is such an easy way to miscommunicate with people unintentionally. And I don't know a good solution, except making an effort to use more concrete language when we are talking about abstract concepts that have complex meaning.
DeleteThat is awesome that you were able to turn the term 'weird' around for you. It still does not come off to me as a compliment for me. Now, I just try not to think about things that I cannot know for sure, and just try to always have positive assumptions.
I don't know if there is a right or wrong way, but it is interesting to me thinking how much unintentional pain I inflicted on myself by taking that word always negatively, when I really just didn't know.