Language geek that I am, I of course have a favorite
word: “syzygy,” which refers to the
alignment of the sun, earth, and moon.
It is not, however, the astronomical phenomenon that makes the word
interesting to me; rather, it the word’s sheer oddity. It’s an outlaw, an outlier, a renegade in the
clubby, stuffed-chair company of English words.
It’s a muscular word, ripped and vascular and six-packed, a word that
could clean and jerk an Audi. It’s a
martial word, a word with a soldierly march and Spartanish austerity, three
syllables of two letters only, each containing “y” clinched to a consonant, a
word as stalwart as Leonides at Thermopylae, a word undaunted by its union of consonant-vowel clusters that
appears at the beginning of no English word.
And then there’s the sound-sense
bonus, the no-nonsense, military procession of syllables suggesting the
alignment the word denotes. It almost
seems a made-up word, though it in fact combines two Greek words, syn, meaning “together” and zagon, meaning “yoke.”
But my language geekdom extends beyond having a
favorite word. I have a favorite prefix:
“re,” from Latin meaning “again,” “back,” “anew.” “Re” attaches itself to verbs to indicate
that the action is redone, revised, revamped, reiterated. “Re” is the Xerox of prefixes; “re” is a keen
edged coulter that turns the encrusted up and back and over; “re” is a verbal do-over
make-over.
* *
*
Sometimes, to purposefully renounce our
self-awareness is to restore it.
Sometimes, we are reprieved from memory, rekindled by a seizing impulse,
released into the swelling urgency of a moment.
Sometimes, like old recordings, we are remastered, recapturing the
rhythmed tune that sings us. Sometimes,
we are bitten by remorse. Sometimes, we
are maladied with no remedy but resilience, retrenchment, rebellion, or the recuperative
strength of renewed resolve. Sometimes,
religion ligatures us to an expression of reverence or a renaissance of wonder;
sometimes, it redeems, buying us back to ourselves; sometimes, it resurrects us
with a resurgence of hope and gratitude; sometimes, it reveals what we already
knew by heart but could not find the words to utter. Sometimes, we reject regret, repress repression,
reserve our reserve, reproach our reproach.
* *
*
I witnessed a retreat that was a resolute act of
courage. In a meeting of academic
division chairs and department heads, my Humanities Division colleague
presented and defended a proposal that received a dour reception. The
discussion quickly regressed into contentiousness. Objections were raised, dire
implications prophesied, tangents expounded, tangents of tangents were
recounted. Voices grew loud, angry. My
colleague responded, calmly answering objections, pointing out misreadings and
clarifying misconceptions, but moment by moment the mood of the meeting was
fast unfastening.
Suddenly my colleague stood up and said, “I’m going
to step out into the hallway for a few minutes.
I’m finding myself growing angry at your anger, and I don’t want to say
something I’ll regret later. I’ll return
when I’ve cooled off, and maybe then we can reconsider this issue more
deliberately.” He left, we sat silent,
he returned, we deliberated.
My colleague refused to react by re-enacting,
refused to reflect a resentment he did not feel, refused to recoil into a
motion not his own, refused to reciprocate that meeting’s heat, retaining,
instead, a steady temperature of his own.
For me he redefined what I thought I knew of rectitude, resolution, and
resilience.
* *
*
At the age of 22, Benjamin Franklin resolved to
reorient his life by pursuing “the bold and arduous Project of arriving at
moral Perfection.” After all, he
reasoned, because he knew right from wrong, he “did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the
other.” But rescinding faults and
reinforcing virtues entailed more than simple resolution. To succeed, moral rehabilitation required a
method. It must be actionable, not merely speculative. So, he created an 18th century
version of an app: a spreadsheet designed to promote his behavior to
incorruptibility.
First, he chose 13 virtues, sequenced such that
success with one leveraged success with the next: temperance, silence, order,
resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness,
tranquility, chastity, and humility.
Then, for each virtue, he created a page with seven columns, one for
each day of the week, and thirteen rows for each of the virtues. Focusing on one virtue per week, he marked
every relapse with “a little black Spot” in the appropriate cell. He anticipated the pleasing visual evidence
of his having repelled fault and reinforced virtue.
“I never arrived at the Perfection I had been so
ambitious of obtaining,” Franklin confesses.
Life intervened: business and public affairs intrude and divert his
attention. Habit resists reform;
inclination repulses principle; conjured ideals exceed the time and attention
we have to give—the littoral shelves against which most resolutions founder. And yet, for me, the most important word
Franklin utters is “arrived,” for that means he started. We always, like Franklin, fall “far short” of
perfection, and while that can occasion regret, it is no reason for resignation.
Franklin says, “I was by the Endeavor a better and a happier Man than I
otherwise would have been, if I had not attempted it.” The launching forth, the enterprising itself,
the heart-deep reluctance to settle for being only what we already are—these
repurchase us from reproach and recrimination.
* *
*
Periodically, mom decided the furniture in the
living room needed to be rearranged. Dad
and I, knowing this reorganization would require our physical labor,
plaintively inquired, “But why? It looks
fine the way it is.” Mom gave no reason
beyond “it was time” but beyond that beyond she intuitively knew what Dad and I
could not comprehend: things need to be
repositioned, regrouped, reshuffled, reconfigured, recombined, repositioned, rerelated,
reinvigorated. Space needs to be
respaced, reshaped. Things need to be
jostled into fresh dialogues of color and form.
A room, like a life, needs to speak in a fresh dialect, a repatterned
idiom, if it is to impart a renewed nuance.
* *
*
“Re”—just a chip of language, really, but brimming
with linguistic power. “It is a
mischievous notion,” Emerson says, “that the world was finished a long time
ago.” “Re” is “plastic and fluid;” it confutes
fixity and baffles the encumbrance of the given. It pitches woo to the remodel and recast. It says the made can be remade, the done,
redone, and that means the made and done can be made and done, differently,
better.
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