Tracking the rhetoric

Sometimes I wonder - What would happen if ...

 I find myself raising this question lately.  I never used to allow myself to entertain the question at all.  I considered it counter-productive.  I thought it would lead to regret.  Now I think that not asking it might lead to regret.  It's more proof that my perspectives or philosophies for living have changed as I have moved through life.  

So, being a language buff, I thought I had better analyze my own language over time to see if this change in philosophy is just a notion for me or if it is real.  So, I looked back to chart any changes I might find.  

One of the most reliable ways to do that is to look at the types of idioms that appear in one's speech or writing.  George Lakoff is one of the bright minds in linguistics who proffered the theories about the development of idioms in a language. I once got to be in a group of 12 people to hear him informally talk about his life's work and his recent work on idioms when he was flown to Arlington for a separate event.  He had some fascinating ideas.  They followed the Sapir-Whorf theory of language, the idea that language sets the parameters for one's world view to an extent.  (I have tried to make my own work prove up the Whorfian version [the less deterministic version] of that theory). Basically, Lakoff thinks that idioms contain the values of a society and that the person using the idiom shows alignment with those values if (s)he is not casting the idiom in a negative statement.  

So what did I find when I analyzed my own language?  Oh very definitely I have changed.   I once talked of comparing my life to my pool which was an eyesore at the time.  It was one of my first blogs in 2004.

"The pool in my back yard is in great need of maintenance. I plan to get to that in about 3 hours. In the meantime I have to look at the eyesore it has become in the middle of an otherwise nice back yard. My life at this time is analogous to the pool. Right now it is in a little disarray. Years I have worked on this part or that part of my life so that most of the time it is in decent working order. But today I don't see it that way. I plan to get to that also in about 3 hours." [November 6, 2004]

Since that writing, I have let the metaphoric 3 hours pass and have worked hard on the disarray mentioned, which had been a result of a temporary disorientation.  

A second finding was that I have traded a view of putting up with discontent for the idea of moving to what leads to satisfaction. I can see it in the language I have used.  A good example of this is from a recent blog, Out of the Ashes.  I wrote,

 "Life requires us to learn as we go, to rise from ashes, to experience metamorphosis after tragedy or failure."  

I would have never written that a decade ago because changing or metamorphosizing into something else would have represented instability.  That instability would have led to discontent.  But now, a statement like that represents sound reason. Why of course a person can take it upon himself or herself to enact change or reverse a direction based on experience and the need to be satisfied on life’s path. 

Two idioms come to mind, “Pay as you go,” and the idea of getting a “makeover,” even extreme makeovers.  The pay as you go idea would be applied to learning how life works and reflecting on that, but it is the same principle as in finance.   It’s no quantum leap to learn as you go.  The second idea of makeovers has a number of applications – cars, houses, money, diet, etc.  So, why not apply it to one’s philosophy for living.  And although there are references to change in my early blogs, the changes all referred to making sense of a jolt in life.  Life as a roller coaster kept coming out in those blogs.  Now the change references are focused, calculated, and sensible ("Life requires us...") as shown in the blog with the Phoenix allusion.