web counter

December 8, 2006

Words in a Safety Box . . .

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 10:12 am

I've been thinking . . .
When I was in college, my mom told me about a box that she kept in the back my bedroom closet. It was there the whole time I was growing up. The box was a torn, sad, brown corrugated, hardly worth remembering — but I remembered it. From time to time, as a tiny curious person, I would crawl back into the deep, dark depths of my closet to see what secrets were kept there.

I was not too good at refolding box tops and that box had the four sides folded in –in the way people do when tape isn’t an option. The center where they met had been smashed from years of heavier boxes being set upon it. In every way, it was a box perfectly designed never to capture the interest of a child. So the box could, and did, hide in plain view most of my childhood.

Inside that box, at any given moment, sat about twenty percent of my current ownership of toys. Every so often, my mother would rotate a few toys into and out of that box. She said that I never missed the toys that went into the box. She said that when toys came back out, I acted as if they were brand new. My mother said the box taught me to take care of my toys and value them. My mother should have been a child toy psychologist.

Over the years, I’ve come to think of that broken brown box as a toy safety box.

I’ve often thuoght I wish we had a safety box like that for words.

Important words get tossed around like old toys do. Some words once had truly great meanings — words such as truly and great. They seem to have lost their depth and sparkle. In my heart, I know that the first time someone wrote yours truly, it meant more. So, too did the word, sincerely. Do people think what they are saying when they write them? What about when they write Love?

I wonder. What about when we write wonder?

Words are so important. They need the depth of meaning that they were born with.

Good once was good. Nice used to roll nicely off the tongue. Beautiful it was so breathtaking, it never needed a very to help it. Imagine how great something or soemone great used to be — someone like Alexander.

Joy might be the word I miss the most.

At one time joy filled a heart. I think about joy. I wish for joy, and I wish joy for my friends, and yet when I write the word, it seems shallow, not conveying how deeply I wish for them.

Joy is exponentially greater than the happiness we all seek, but the word has been made flat like old soda. Now it calls up thoughts of Seasons Greetings and green box bottoms with clear covers in drug stores every November. It’s laced with cranky people standing in lines at cash registers. How can I wish true joy when it conjures up images of chaos and too much to do?

I wish we could hide words the way my mother hid my toys. I wish we could place them in a safety box, back in my childhood closet until they were new again.

We might have to learn a few new words. We might to stop and think about the words we choose, but maybe that could lead to new thoughts. Would that be so bad?

We might even leave some words in the box to stay there until we understood their power — words we don’t need, words that hurt., words that separate people.

It would be good to take heartfelt words off advertising. where we don’t really mean them. That might lead us to find new ways to express ideas. We could let the words we put away stay gone for months and see how we do at communicating.

When we brought the over-used words back, we might find that we think differently about them. We might not use them not so frequently, not so frivolously. We might not put them on billboards.

I want to know joy, good will, and peace as something more than words on a Christmas card.

Joy. Love. Beauty. Quality. Forgiveness. Peace. Hope. Truth. Friend. Hero. Loyalty. Value. Add your own words here.

I wish you all of those words — the real ones.

Liz's Signature

adapted from letting me be

Share This


Filed under Business Life, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog, Writing |



C'mon. Let's talk!

15 Comments to “Words in a Safety Box . . .”

  1. December 8th, 2006 at 10:55 am
    GP said

    Why synchronicity to read this about the word “joy”. While email is one of the best inventions since sliced bread (ah, the innkeeper in me coming out!) , so much of emotion and meaning sometimes gets left out or missed by both writer and reader.

    I have a horse riding friend, we just started emailing and the one thing i noticed in her emails and the way she writes is “joy”. Really a joy to read her work

    GP in Montana

  2. December 8th, 2006 at 10:55 am
    Kim of "Kim & Jason" said

    Hi Liz,
    This post was beautiful! How quick we are to throw around words. It’s interesting to see how that has changed the meanings of these words. Life is so busy that often our sincerity is compromised. It doesn’t have to be that way, though.

    Some of the words I would add to the list are: Faith, Dream, Honesty, and Trust.

  3. December 8th, 2006 at 10:59 am
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Kim!
    Welcome!
    Thank you for adding your words to the list. That means so much to me. I appreciate it. :)

    Trust, yeah, trust.

  4. December 8th, 2006 at 11:50 am
    Whitney said

    You can add “integrity” to the list.

    If we’ve lost sight of the true meaning of words like “honesty” and “trust,” then we’ve lost sight of the meaning of “integrity.”

  5. December 8th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
    Tammy said

    I add:

    Survivor — Lance Armstrong survived cancer. John McCain survived a POW camp. Others survived WWII concentration camps, Pearl Harbor, or 9/11. Those are survivors — they’ve been to hell and back. Beyonce is not a survivor.

    Legend — This term shouldn’t be applied to anyone who hasn’t worked for at least a quarter century. Legends have significant, lasting impact. Legends reshaped the landscape. Legends maintained influence for decades. In the entertainment field, people like Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Eric Clapton, BB King, Martin Scorcese, Steven Spielberg and Paul Newman are legends. Readers can fill in the blanks those (younger) performers who aren’t legends but are already called such for little real reason.

    Genius — Genius isn’t a synonym for “really good at what they do.” Genius is beyond “good” and is beyond “great”. You can put Einstein and Curie in that class and receive little argument from anyone. But there’s too many people being called “geniuses” — and too many of them don’t belong there.

    I second Liz’s vote for putting “hero” on the list too.

  6. December 8th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Whitney!
    I like that word, Integrity it means so much in every quarter.

  7. December 8th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Tammy!
    Welcome!
    Thank you for not only adding word, but also adding such concrete examples. They are an inspiration in of themselves. :)

  8. December 8th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi GP,
    Sorry and Welcome. Your comment got stuck in Akismet moderation. :(

    I know that email does take the feeling and dampen the meaning of many things we try to say. And often we exacerbate the situation by whipping off a few words without thinking about them. I congratulate on having a friend who understand the real meaning of the word joy,

  9. December 8th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
    Mike said

    Hi Liz,

    Great post. Of course, there are plenty of great (oops) words in that box called the thesaurus. Joy (and my nomination, Joy’s cousin delight) can always be replaced with rapture and elation for a while.

    Have an implausibly spectacular weekend!

    Mike

  10. December 8th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Mike!
    Delight is a word that is worth celebrating too. You’re so right! Rapture and elation would be nice to take out and dust off for a while.

    You do the same with making indelible and breathtaking memories. :)

  11. December 8th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
    Damon said

    This is a great article, and it’s great for business. I’m going to speak to some of my managers on this issue today.

  12. December 8th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
    Scorpia said

    Awesome. Once upon a time it meant something that filled you with awe. Real awe.

    Nowadays, it’s tossed around so much in the gaming world, it hardly has a meaning.

    Immersive. I almost want to take this word out of the language, never mind sticking it in a box. Every new game these days is “immersive” or pretends to be.

    Killer. Not exactly a nice word to begin with, it is often (over-)used in place of “awesome”, particularly with graphics: “Killer graphics!”.

    Thanks, I’d rather not become the victim of a game’s visuals. Hmmm….

    “Gamer Murdered By Eye Candy; Officials Call For Ban On Graphics”

  13. December 8th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Scorpia,
    You bring up something that’s bothered me too. How many words we use that are violent without thinking about them. “I could just kill you!” “Destroy the competition!” etc. I’m not saying we should become wimps my any means, but we should listen to what we are saying. :)

  14. December 8th, 2006 at 6:28 pm
    Scorpia said

    And lest we forget, there’s also:

    “Drop-dead (something)”, for example, “Drop-dead gorgeous”.

    We could look for a better way of saying what that means.

  15. December 8th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Yeah, Scorpia, I know what you mean. Every year in publishing my birthday used to be the drop-dead date for project. That was always nice. Hmmmm.

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

C'mon Let's Talk!