On Words Episode #080929

There are certain words, that if you are going to use them, you should really know what they mean. Today’s example includes three words with related, but quantifiably different meanings. Read on, dear reader and just feel the brain matter expanding.

Our words are: Moron, Imbecile and Idiot. According to a very old and not necessarily contemporary dictionary of mine, these words reflect classifications of mental aptitude related to a person’s IQ.

Idiot = < 25 IQ
Imbecile = 25-50 IQ
Moron = 50-75 IQ

Therefore, while it may make sense to proclaim, “Don’t be an idiot, you moron!” Stating, “You’re a moron, you idiot,” would be a compliment – of sorts. Which begs the question, which is worse, a moronic idiot, or an imbecilic moron?

Aren’t you glad you stopped by?

FW: a father's wisdom - profanity

My mother tells stories about my dad. He died 44 years ago, but I have learned much about his fatherly ways by these stories. It is interesting to me how a father’s wisdom can be forwarded.

“Your father never swore. He just didn’t believe it in. I heard him say more than once, after I said ‘shit,’ that I ‘had something in my mouth that he didn’t want on the bottom of his shoe.’

There was the one night that I remember him cussing. We were driving from Baltimore, Maryland to South Carolina to visit with family. This would have been before your sister was born (before 1952), and it was dark and rainy. It was a messy, slow rain that just wet everything and kept the windshield dirty. We had stopped and William Earl had done his best to wash and clean of the windshield. As we started back onto the road, a truck came by, hit a mud puddle and splashed muddy goo on the windshield. Your father said, ‘damn it.’ I knew better than to say anything because he was m-a-d. That is the only time he ever cussed that I know of.”

My father use to say, “Profanity is a sign of a person with a limited vocabulary.” I suspect he was right.

Enough Gloom Already

As much as you do or do not consider yourself an artist, you understand the following – I feel intensely and often, and more often than not my creative expressions are moved by the 'dark side' of my feelings. It is more often struggle, pain, fear, anxiety or despair that will propel itself through me and into the words of these pages. Joyfulness, peace, love, contentment – these are not so demanding of a voice. I am usually content to just feel them. The others, those 'dark side' feelings, I usually want to get them out and go beyond them, so I write. It helps.

If you are wandering around here, this concept of self preservation through expression is important as is the tendency for those expressions to be a bit – well – dark. Strangely enough, if you were to speak to me, even on the days I wrote the darkest words, casting gloom, despair and agony on me (be sure and catch the reference to HeeHaw), I would not appear unusually troubled.

I guess what I am trying to claim here, is that I am a positive and hopeful person. I literally ooze hope and faith. I do. Those overflowings of hope don’t always make it here.

Please accept my apologies for being so one-sidedly creative here, and that is what I do.

Now, follow the rules and leave a comment or else I’ll get depressed and launch into poetry.

Quoting

Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps. - Emo Phillips

Relief

Wandering in the woods

Or In the mind

Of seasoned 'scapes

Brings reasonable

Lavish dreamers

Hopeful clarity

I Feel, Therefore I am

Sympathy

Empathy

Solitude

 

Sometimes feelings are so deep and personal that all that can be done is to feel them.

Crashing

My son and one of his friends were in an auto accident this past week. As you can tell by the photo here, they are ‘lucky’ to be alive. They both have injuries, but none that are now life threatening.

It is too soon for me to try and process what we have been through. Let me just claim that I am truly grateful for the people in my life who offer love and support at times like these. I am grateful to God for a faith that abides.

My heart aches. My mind strains to find some understanding. My fears scream dark shadows. I am struck by how powerless I am. Life can change very fast.

Congruence

I believe we all wander through life, at times or for a time, cloaked with various masks, skins of textured facades, living as much with our fabricated external selves as with our inner truth. Therein rests our deepest self, the pain, loss, ache of life’s journeys won and lost. Therein lies that being so often sought and revered as the true self, the real us – with its’ complete measure of joy and depth.

Yet, is either the outer or inner more real? Are we not both mask and soul?

The beauty and grace of the dance, without the well hidden strain and sweat of the all but stumbling artist would not exist, nor would the precarious effort have any value, but for the fabric of the art finding form.

It is a dance, of sorts, this thing we call life - isn't it?

Quoting

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. - Ludwig Wittgenstein