Tag Archives: debated

Affectionate

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

 

Affectionate: (adj.) readily feeling or showing fondness or tenderness: e.g. a happy and affectionate family.

You gotta BE there.

It’s true, you know. There are some things in life that cannot be viewed, read, perused, discussed, debated or downloaded.

Affection is one of them.

In a climate where “lukewarm” has begun to feel “heated,” we lack such closeness and intimacy that it has caused us to become defensive with one another because we privately feel cheated of the tenderness we need to satisfy our souls, yet at the same time we push away personal overtures from those who try to get too close too quickly.

A lady warned me the other day, saying, “Watch out! I’m a hugger.”

I do remember attending a rock concert many years ago where complete strangers–thousands of them–came up to each other, hugging in groups of five and ten without explanation or apology. Yet to promote such an idea in our day and age would be cynically mocked as a “hippie philosophy,” a throw-back to olden times or impractical due to the spread of disease.

This culminated for me when I saw churches offering hand sanitizer to folks after they had the “passing of the peace.” I wish I had a profanity to express how upsetting that is to me. And please, spare me the explanation on why it is needed. I am fed up with the notion of what is needful and anxious for the pursuit of what is helpful.

  • I need affection.
  • I need to be affectionate.

Now, it doesn’t have to always be demonstrative, but it does have to be spontaneous and real. It can be reaching across a table and cutting up the banana of a friend who is making you coffee, or coring an apple for another friend so she doesn’t have to deal with stems and seeds.

When you lose affection in a society, you promote the idea of isolation. Once humans are isolated, there’s only one thing that takes hold–survival.

Is it possible that in the next decade we will begin to treat each other–all the time–like we do when we’re in a traffic jam?

Addled

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Addled: (adj.) confused and unable to think clearly (often humorous).

So what is the difference between addled, comedic, pitiful and hilarious? I guess it would be whether people laugh or shake their heads in disbelief. For after all, in order for confusion to be funny, we have to believe there’s some way that clarity could have won the day.

There are actually  many addled things in our society that do NOT evoke a smile:

Listening to Republicans and Democrats debate an issue which they don’t understand but still have developed a rock-solid conviction about is not a source of gaiety. It teeters between baffled and frustrated.

Going to a religious service to hear the mispronouncing of two-thousand-year-old names and locations, as people donned in robes insist that bread and wine purchased at the local grocery store has supernaturally transformed itself into everlasting life, is not exactly what I would call the “joy of the Lord.”

Even though I appreciate that the dictionary considers “addled” to have humorous overtones, watching your grandparent misplace his or her keys for the fortieth time this week does lose some of its charm.

I think we have a responsibility, at all costs to the human tribe, to avoid appearing addled. Matter of fact, there are times I am reluctant to ask others to help me look for something or remember something, but instead choose to find a nice, comfortable, cushy chair in my soul and relax there until memory serves me.

Yes, sometimes it’s better to shut up for fear that your brain has already been closed for repair.

Addled is not cute–and if you’re over the age of thirty-five, if you accidentally become disoriented in front of anyone younger than yourself, they will attach Alzheimer’s to you.

Politics and religion are argued because no one knows one way or the other, but everyone insists they have the answer.

So that’s addled–when you run across a mystery and you’re positive that Mr. Plum did it with a candlestick … in the conservatory.