Once upon a time… the word fairy
was a close relative of the word faith.
Once upon a time… a fairy was a symbol of faith.
It’s hard to say why, but once upon a time…
fairy and faith were linguistic relatives.
How do I know this?
Because of eTymology.
If you’re not familiar with etymology, it’s the study of words through time -
the study of their use, their meanings, and their relationships.
When I began to study etymology it was intellectual,
but it’s become far more.
Today, I study words because it helps me clarify ambiguous concepts,
concepts such as faith…
As odd as it sounds, etymology helps me get out of my head,
and into a lived experience.
Let me show you.
When I was studying the concept of faith, I found the definitions lofty and vague.
None of them helped me integrate faith into my life.
So I turned to etymology.
That’s when I was led to fairy.
This relationship seemed absurd, but I decided to see what fairy could teach me about faith.
Here’s one of the definitions I discovered for fairy.
Fairy ::: not explainable by physical laws.
Not explainable by physical laws.
When I read that, something in me clicked, like the central keystone of a bridge that holds it all in place.
Suddenly, I knew what faith was. It was something I was never going to explain by physical laws.
Maybe this sounds silly? But it works.
You see, when I’m stuck, I need things to be obvious, like lightning in a bright blue sky.
I need to be startled out of my old paradigm.
And in this case I was.
I was startled by the absurd notion that fairy had anything to do with faith,
and that the obvious definition of fairy, not explainable by physical laws…
was what I needed to shake me up like a snowglobe,
So the flakes could settle in a new way.
This is what I hope to do today.
Shake up the old, and surprise you with the obvious.
I want to show you what’s going on beneath the chatter of words - what’s always been going on.
I want to shine a big, bright light upon that thing we call language.
That thing we use everyday, without much thought:
in conversation, books, songs, stories, poems, articles, science, religion, prayers, blessings…
we use language to explain the world around us,
and the universe within us.
This is why I created Lucidesse,
to explain the world around us, and the universe within us,
to clarify ambiguous concepts,
to shine light upon neglected areas of darkness.
I created Lucidesse to be… clear, shining, bright.
The word Lucidesse comes from two words.
The first is Lucid: clear, shining, bright.
The second is esse, E S S E: this is the present particle of “to be”.
When you combine these two words you get:
to be… clear, shining, bright.
Lucidesse literally means to be… clear, shining, bright.
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My goal here is not to amaze you with wordplay but to share how etymology supports my journey… which is an endless adventure
of personal discovery.
Personal discovery.
That’s a common hurdle for people today.
Personal discovery. Why don’t we take the time to know ourselves?
Can we ever know anyone better?
Who but us hears the whispers of our heart,
knows the truth of our bones, lives the wisdom of our soul?
Us. Only us. Each of us a lighthouse, Illuminating our place in this universe,
standing upon the bedrock of personal truth.
A lighthouse, whose inner light is born from the ageless wisdom “know thyself.”
Know thyself.
Which doesn’t need to be painful.
Knowing oneself begins with curiosity, a child unshackled by judgements and fears.
This child is inquisitive, wise, and powerful, a bold light in any darkness..
This child is within each of us.
More and more people are learning this, they’re discovering the child within,
the one who is present, aware, curious, unshackled.
The one who watches, learns, grows, and discovers.
People are living beyond their fears by “knowing themselves.”
This includes me.
Every day, every week, month, and year,
my life looks more and more like the life I dare to dream.
A large part of my success is due to etymology, to the study of words.
This may not be your thing.
That’s fine. I’m simply sharing my curiosity and passion, because anything which intrigues you,
is a powerful ally on your journey.
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Before we go further, I want to explain a few things about language.
I’ll be using the letter A for this example.
For the Egyptians, the letter A was the symbol of a hawk,
and made the sound of that word. Awk.
As the letter A traversed culture, time, and place,
It found itself in the Phoenician language, and when it did,
it morphed into the symbol of an ox,
and made the sound of that word. Ox.
So… the hawk of the Egyptians became the ox of the Phoenicians.
There’s a wonderful book about this, it’s called The Spell of the Sensuous.
It is not an easy read, but if you take your time, it may deepen your understanding of language.
Language as communication.
And communication is essential in the digital era, both written and spoken.
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Ok, so what about the letter A.
What did I show you?
I showed relationship.
The relationship of one letter across culture, time, and space.
One letter…
Now, imagine one word
across culture, time, and space.
How many relationships would it have?
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.One way I like to define etymology is “the study of relationships.”
How one word relates to itself, and to other words,
across culture, time and space.
There are other variables to language but I’m only mentioning the main three for ease and simplicity.
Now, you may want to google “the tree of language” because there are great images to go along with what I’m saying. I didn’t come up with any of this, I’m standing on the shoulders of giants, utilizing their brilliance.
Here it is in a nutshell.
Language is a tree.
Its branches extend across time and space,
through culture, environment, and circumstance.
This tree is our lineage… the hands and fingers of our ancestry.
This tree is constantly growing, adapting, changing,
according to the fertile soil which feeds it.
And what is this fertile soil?
Us.
We are fertile soil.
Our culture, our place, our time on this earth.
Our language is living and breathing.
It’s the product of us, of people IN culture, IN time, IN space.
In the past, the word language meant ::: people, tribe, nation.
Language is people. Language can’t exist outside of people.
Language exists at all because we need it.
We need language to express ourselves, in our culture, our time, our place.
Let’s look at Google for example.
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The creators of Google needed a word to hold this concept - “the organizing of infinite amounts of information”.
So, they took a word which represents a nearly infinite number.
That word is googol, and the number it represents is a 1 followed by 100 zeros.
They took this word, googol, and tweaked it to get Google.
That was about 20 years ago.
Today, when we say Google, we don’t think of the number 1 followed by 100 zeros,
nor do we think of organizing infinite amounts of information.
What we think about is searching for something on the web.
So you see, Google exists to fill a void,
to express our culture, our time, our place.
We are the creators of language, of words.
Like Lucidesse.
I needed a word which brought clarity to the present moment
Lucidesse.
To be clear, shining, bright.
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Why does this matter? It doesn’t, really.
Many people live a full life without looking to words for guidance and wisdom.
But the fullness of my life includes words, words as allies, because they bring clarity and meaning to my life…
Words allow me to speak and write lucidly, which is the foundation of healthy relationships.
Clear and bright communication leads to clear and bright relationships.
I wonder if these words describe your communication?
Are you clear and bright?
Are you seen?
Are you known?
“To be known” is from the Late Latin word intimatus, intimate.
That’s the very thing I’m trying to do, “to be known”, “to be intimate”
What if the next time you sought intimacy, you allowed yourself to be known.
How might this change your relationship… with yourself, with others,
with the world around you.
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Healthy relationships are essential for our well-being, and also for our survival.
It’s easy to forget this in modern society, we pretend we aren’t interdependent,
but ancient cultures could not afford to forget.
Their lives were deeply entwined, dependent on each other,
on nature, plants, crops, animals, weather, seasons.
We are interdependent, even if we don’t associate with certain people.
When we live with the understanding that distance and time do not negate our interdependence, we understand the butterfly beating its wings in Singapore, and the hurricane in Florida.
All things, all beings, all life, is interdependent.
And since words are us, words are interdependent, even if they don’t often associate.
Like intimate & lucid.
To be lucid, I must be intimate.
To be intimate, I must be lucid.
Clear and bright, to be seen, to be known.
I’m going to attempt to show you what I mean by using two ordinary words.
Words which have no association today, but going backward in time, they are related.
.
I can’t promise you this will work,
I may not do a good job showing how these two words live in the same house…
so don’t glue down the furniture.Let’s just start with my promise to show you two words.
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To do this I want to travel back in time, back to 5000 BC.
The language spoken then was Proto-Indo-European.
In this language there is a word which makes up part of the word promise.
You see, promise is created from two words.
This first part of promise is this ancient word from 5000 BC:
Per - meaning “before, in front of, move forward”.
Per: “before, in front of, move forward”.
The second part of promise is younger, it’s the word mittere,
meaning “let go, release, send”.
Mittere: “let go, release, send”.
When we put these two together we get a variety of phrases:
“let go before”,
“release in front of”,
and “send forward”.
“before the move forward.”
These phrases don’t make a lot of sense on their own so let’s compare them to the definition of promise:
Promise: “a declaration to the future…
Let me say that part again:
“a declaration to the future,
made by one person to another,
assuring the latter that the former will do a specified act."
So, a promise is a vow from one person to another:
to do something in the future.
The promise is now, in the present,
the fulfillment is later, in the future.
Let’s look at those initial phrases again:
“let go before”,
“release in front of”,
“send forward”.
Ok, so a promise is let go before something else happens,
a promise is released in front of something else happening,
a promise is sent forward into the future.
A modern and somewhat crude form of promise is online shopping.
We let go of money before the delivery arrives.
The company sends forward a promise to mail us what we bought.
We make promises with each other every day.
Some big, some little.
But each one is a vow with and between people.
An interconnected commitment to a particular outcome.
Those involved agree on a shared, interdependent future.
…a shared, interdependent future.
As a side-note, I’d like to mention that a promise can also be singular.
Something within ourselves.
Ok. So there’s a little etymology of promise.
What does all of this mean?
It feels like wordplay to me, which I said I wasn’t going to do. So let me see if I can undo it.
Let’s move onto a dry, stable word?
Like Furniture.
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Furniture is nice. It’s solid. It’s stable.
It stays where you left it.
This will be an easy word to dissect.
Furniture is derived from the extended form of the word per.
Per: “before, in front of, move forward”.
Huh. That’s the same as in promise.
Per: “before, in front of, move forward”.
How can furniture and promise be related?
I’m not sure… let’s ferret around.
Let’s start with “in front of”.
Both furniture and promise sit in front of something else.
Furniture sits in front of fireplaces, walls, ovens.
Promises sit in front of the future.
How about “move forward”?
Furniture moves forward in space,
Promise moves forward in time.
How about “before”?
Furniture is before you live in a place,
Promise is before the action of something in time.
Ok, I’m starting to see something.
A relationship that I’ve never seen before.
Furniture is to space what Promise is to time.
Furniture is to space what Promise is to time.
Only we don’t treat them as such today.
Furniture is solid,
a promise is well, unstable, unpredictable.
Furniture stays where you put it.
It doesn’t need signatures and contracts.
A promise is anything but solid.
Most promises fade and die long before the furniture gets old…
What if promises were furniture, solid and stable?
What if promises were a formidable oak table?
Or a marble statue?
What if promises were dependable, and moved through life with you?
Like knowing someone would care for you at the end of your days…
What if…
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Ok, I just showed you what I promised to show you.
Maybe it worked, maybe it failed.
Maybe traveling to 5000 BC was too far?
Or not far enough?
What does it take to spark your curiosity?
Therein lies your wisdom.
And herein lies mine.
I use the interdepence of words to ask inquisitive, child-like questions.
What if my promises were oak tables and marble statues?
What if my promises were solid and stable?
What if they live through time, like grandpa’s brass lamp, or great grandma’s rocking chair?
What if… I lived a life of furniture-promises?
How would this change me? My relationships?
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Why do I ask such questions?
Because this is who I am, it’s how I live my life.
To be clear and bright.
To inspire strokes of genius, in myself, and in others.
This is my soul’s directive.
This is what I feel called to do.
Lucidesse.
I say all this in hopes that you may catch a spark of my passion and ignite your own.
Etymology isn’t the end-all, be-all, it’s simply the means through which I share my passion.
Your Passion is an open door, a new perspective, an unraveling of old mysteries.
Passion is the path to meaning and purpose - even the tiniest interest can flame into a passion if we explore it..
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Each time I explore a word I feel a tiny flame in my hand,
as though I’m holding a hatchling in a nest.
I slowly and gently inspect each downy feather.
This may sound weird but it doesn’t feel weird. I love words,
they fascinate and thrill me, they help me navigate this confusing reality.
But I must remember to leave the hatchling in the nest because without it, the hatchling is lost.
Just as a word without culture, without time, without place, is lost.
My inspection of any word is two-fold, it is the word itself, but also the nest it rests in,
the nest it was born into,
the culture, the time, the place.
Words are cultural DNA, the memories of all peoples, tribes, nations.
Just consider ALL the words which exist,
now, and in the past.
How many words are there?
How are they related, interdependent, ancestral?
Like nesting dolls. There’s always another hidden within.
Each word has its own meaning, even as there’s a shared concept nested between the dolls.
This shared concept is their core, their essence.
There’s that word again, esse, like in Lucidesse.
Esse: to be.
Essence: being.
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I’d like you to imagine for a moment that the words I’ve spoken today are a rug.
You can see the warp and weft, the hide-and-seek,
each thread dancing over and under the others.
You see my words as colors, patterns, textures.
This is my magic.
I am the thread, the loom, the weaver of words.
I invite you to sit,
here upon my weaving,
and share my fire.
You may rest upon my rug until you’ve found your magic,
through whatever fascinates you.
But I’m not just sharing my rug,
I’m sharing my method of weaving.
I’m sharing how to weave your life, with your magic, through your passions and curiosities.
Therein lies your wisdom.
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We each have our own magic, something only we can harness.
It does no good to steal another person’s magic because we can’t use it,
we can only:
Employ our magic.
Embrace our weavings.
Enrich our life.
Engage intimately.
It is upon my rug that I engage with you intimately….
with deep, constant, affection.
I do this with words.
Through their Relationship & Interdependence.
Like Fairy and Faith.
Think about these two words for a moment.
Fairy and Faith.
Each of us privately holds a unique concept for these words,
even as we collectively share a common definition.
Language is private, yet communal.
When one person says “go this way”,
another person hears “go that way”.
And never do the two meet.
…private, yet communal….
This is the brilliance and conundrum of words -
every word personal,
every word universal.
It’s a tricky path I walk, attempting to convey the essence of a concept -
to guide you to your truth, your meaning, your purpose, your magic.
This is why I study words - to be clear, bright, and shining.
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I wish I were more receptive to the minutiae of life,
but I live within wooden walls, glass windows, and metal doors.
I breathe wifi frequencies and cell phone transmissions.
So I turn to the past, to ancient cultures, to the ancestry of words, for a better view.
I turn to the past in order to see my blind spots…
both personal and societal.
The past teaches me how words adapt and conform,
how they express relationships,
with self, other, air, water, land, plants, animals, earth, heavens.
And how I can learn from every relationship.
Fairy Faith,
Hawk Ox,
Intimate Lucid,
Furniture Promise.
I end by offering you a promise.
A promise to be clear and bright,
shining a light into our shared future - and I do it all with words.
I’ll keep on keepin’ on… and I hope you’ll join.
I hope you’ll follow one tiny interest, curiosity, or passion, honor the tiny nest with attention,
and quite possibly, you’ll discover your unique stroke of genius.
From motherhood to politician, furniture polisher to promise keeper.
Every stroke, is genius.
With a googol amount of faith,
a promise for our interdependent future,
and lucid intimacy,
I bid you farewell.
OUTRO
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