Vocabulary Lessons

There are certain words that automatically bring me back to high school English classes.  "Rumination" is one of them.  I literally remember having the discussion about a cow chewing his/her cud.  "Morass" is another, because what word can make a high school-er giggle than a word that contains a swear word and means swamp?  


As I sit down today, I have been processing certain specific words and their meaning in my life.  My words lately seem to revolve around being present and thoughtful.  I am constantly hearing and using the word choice...but never when I need to make a choice.  I like to contemplate being purposeful, intentional in my actions...when I'm not actually doing anything.


So how do words and thoughts become actions and happenings?  This is the dilemma that has been plaguing me for the past couple weeks.  Not only do I have high hopes of making change in my life, but I have high expectations as to when these should be accomplished.  


And then I do something.  Some would call it making a choice, but I am struggling with that label, as there is often no conscious thought backing it up.  Or rather I should say, there is no purposeful thought behind it...because I can feel myself thinking at the time.  And I can feel myself thinking during the action.  Afterwards, however, I look at that and ask myself why I never stopped or changed course or did something!  


I so want to be purposeful and present in everything I do, but I allow habits and mindlessness to rule my behavior.  I want to do more than talk about this and acknowledge this:  I want to change.  Do you hear me, self?  I want to change!  I need to change!  I desire the results, and I'm willing to put in the work, too.  But I need to know when to work and how to work. I need more than myself, and I don't know where that more comes from.  There are obvious answers to that - with the main one being God.  And I do believe that God helps us - please don't doubt me on this...but I also know God gives us free will...meaning choices...and we need to come to Him...meaning awareness.  This is my struggle:  Awareness of choice.  


Words have power.  Does action have greater power?    

I Feel Badly for Pennies

So, I feel badly for pennies.  Don't worry - I feel badly for nickels and dimes, too.  (Oddly enough, I don't feel badly for quarters.  I think that is mostly due to the recent state quarters that had my whole family searching for an Iowa P quarter for nearly a year, but I digress...)  So often these coins are carelessly dropped on the ground or given as a tip when they are the remainder of a purchase at a local coffee shop.  My odd empathy for these coins developed last week when I cashed in my piggy bank.  

I have this beautifully decorated piggy bank that stores all my coins.  I live on a cash system, so at the end of each month, I put all of my remaining coins into the yellow pig.  When the pig is full, I take it to the bank.  My months of collecting coins netted $87.60.  I was astonished - it's not a large piggy bank by any means, but that yellow pig held coins that together had high value.

Sometimes I feel like I am a penny or a nickel - maybe even a dime.  I feel like the leftover or the casually-dropped person in the room.  I feel like I don't have value.  I have recently read a few articles that debated stopping the production of coins, especially pennies.  In light of my recent empathetic revelation, I can't help but feel like there could be people who don't want me around either.  It's hard not to succumb to those feelings of lack of worth and value.

As a single woman in her mid-thirties, I have had the amazing opportunity to watch my friends meet their soul mates and start families.  Along with this opportunity, however, comes an almost constant pressure (whether from myself or others, it is the same) to find someone with whom to share my life.  Now, this sounds like a great idea, and I'd love to do that should the opportunity present itself, but it also lends itself to the thinking that I can't have a full life alone.  Now, I truly don't want to have a pity party here...I have learned to love my life as a singleton, and I love being part of the families of all my friends.  

The truth is there is strong value in a group, a family, a couple, etc.  Often, when these people come together, it is for a purpose, and their shared effort and devotion affect change.  There is power in numbers - it's a cliche for a reason.  Membership in the collective doesn't, however, diminish the value of the individual.  And I think that is where I have landed:  Yes, a dollar has more numeric value than a penny, dime, nickel or even quarter, but you can not get to the whole without accounting for the parts.  They all have value, no matter what the number assigned to them may be.  

So I may be just a penny...but my dad is a coin collector, and he has several pennies with more value than initially thought...just like me.