Other….thoughts…

Words have always intrigued me.  Just the sound of certain words, like cashmere, nobility, and honey, just feel good as they roll around in my mouth.

For the last four or five years, I’ve been listening to the way words morph…nouns becoming verbs. Remember the Xerox machine (noun) and how we now xerox copies.  What about the fairy tale troll (noun) that has now become a verb (trolled) when we want to spy on someone or make them feel uncomfortable?

Just recently other has become a verb.  We can “other’ a person or group because they don’t fit in with me or my tribal thought.  Most often, we “other” because they have different political views, a different color of skin, or practice a religion different than mine/ours.

Othering saddens me.  I don’t want to participate in this purposeful non-acceptance of certain people.  I want to work hard to listen to the stories, understand their logic, and hear their loneliness.

I personally like the preamble to the Constitution, “We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union establish justice….”  We sounds just right to me…all of us, together, believing in one another’s goodness.