Words|Truth|People

Words Don’t Define Us — We Define Words

Definitions I live By

I few years back I started writing a memoir. It’s something I do periodically when the years left in front of me, seem a little out-numbered by those I’ve left behind and I feel a sudden urge to write about it. To give my life a little polish so that it’s not so easily overlooked.

During one such episode, I decided that I didn’t care for a lot of the definitions I had used all my life that just weren’t doing it for me anymore.

Words are our helpers. They help us bring forth ideas from some vast and unseen reservoir and put them into symbols that everyone can relate to and hopefully get a kick out of. We are all writers to some degree. Fiction may not flow from the tips of our pens, but we still cherish the idea of getting something uniquely ours into the mind of another and influencing them in some way. Even if just to make them laugh.

So, I took it upon myself to redefine several words so they fit my understanding of what they meant. Not just to me. But to the many others I’ve met in my lifetime who seemed equally disgruntled by them.

These words are in no particular order. They make no claims on any connection to a higher source. After 60 odds years on this planet and having uttered approximately 3 billion of them myself, I felt I had earned the right to tweak things just a little. Just to say I did.

Words I Redefined to Fit My Life

Future: A place of no particular color, size, shape or demographic, that resides at the end of a finite period of intense personal, physical and spiritual exertion, where no judgement or random inspection exists after one’s arrival. Not unlike Coney Island at the end of the B Line.

Past: A crowded and frenetic place, teeming with old friends, discarded ideas, enemies, lovers, favorite movies and every other thing that we touched at one time or another, in no particular order of importance, that nags and pokes and reminds us incessantly to not return there, except to visit and only for brief periods of time. Like a 30th High School Reunion, only with less need to interact, lie and/or pretend to be something we’re not.

Courage: The ability to wake up, place one’s feet firmly on the floor, stand, turn and begin a new day, despite an entire army’s worth of reasons to do otherwise. To breathe in, think, react and endeavor to persevere, when Life appears to have it in for you, and all your calls go straight to voice mail.

Teenager: An intermediate phase in the development of a human being, where nothing is as it seems. Where all problems appear life-threatening, all dreams are just a punchline in someone else’s joke and every day is just another opportunity to trip and fall in front of a beautiful girl. Whose only upside it seems (or so we think) is that we know exactly when it begins and when it will end.

Dreams: The realization of what we’ve longed for, for so long that we sometimes forget the reasons why. Or as succinctly put by an anonymous contributor and would-be poet on the tile walls inside an unfinished B.A.R.T station (San Francisco) circa 1966. “I wish I was, what I was, when I wanted to be, what I am now.”

Friendship: A bond, second only to love, in the pantheon of things we humans search for and believe in. A simple, rather unadorned and abiding sense of loyalty and willingness to listen, that transcends all judgement and false needs of being right. Without it, we soon harden and become something less than we were meant to be.

Life: That which we end up with, by letting things take care of themselves. Alternately: The end result of endless laughter, appreciation, hard work, intuition, humility, bravery and an enduring sense of humor that knows no bounds and brooks no competition from the naysayers that always seem to have our number on speed dial.

Loneliness: The ache that resides in the space between dreaming of love and realizing it.

Desire: That emotion that only exists after most needs have been met. The feeling that takes hold and guides us for fear that if it’s not achieved, some part of us will fall away and never return.

Vietnam: an illusion projected onto a worldwide screen, used to divide a country, co-opt the dreams of millions of American men and women and create a generational divide that has taken decades to repair. Or a small country in Southeast Asia, populated by people not unlike those that live right here.

Death: a rather unhealthy and prematurely negative state of mind that frequently precedes the end of one’s life, or the condition that results from it.

Fear: that first glimpse of “failure” coming over the horizon, before we realize that it’s really just common sense getting a closer look at what needs to be done next.

Sex: the continuous exchange of intimate details between friends, before we actually get around to doing it.

Betrayal: an easy lie, instead of a more difficult truth.

Adult: what a child becomes when he truly loses all sense of imagination.

Time: What we always believe to be in endless supply, until the day we run out of it and realize that we need just a little bit more to accomplish all the tasks that a life full of it was unable to.

Failure: That inevitable moment when what we want in our lives comes into terminal conflict with what everyone else on Earth wants. Or, see Courage.

Woman: Defined loosely as everything a man is not.

I believe that as we age, words age along with us. They become more nuanced and fit our lives more intimately, or they begin to break away and drift in different directions. We have a choice at this point; to redefine them or choose new ones.

Thank you for stopping by. If anyone is inclined to redefine the words in their life, I’d love to read about them.

Joe Luca is writer and editor for ILLUMINATION and a published author and writer of children’s stories, short fiction, non-fiction articles, screenplays and poetry. Publications include Child’s Life, Children’s Playmate and others. There are some other articles below — have a read. And thank you for stopping by.

Caroline de Braganza Kathryn A. LeRoy, Ph.D. Alison Tennent Linda Caroll Paul Myers MBA Liam Ireland Karen Madej Britni Pepper Dr Mehmet Yildiz Amy Marley Geetika Sethi Agnes Laurens Desiree Driesenaar Tony Young, Jr.