Month: June 2023

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One of my all-time favorite books is called Synonyms, Antonyms, and Prepositions (you’re welcome, Jeff!) and was written in 1896 by James C. Fernald, although I have the edition that was revised and expanded in 1947. In alphabetical order, Fernald thoroughly explores the shades of meaning embedded within everyday (in 1896) words and their supposed synonyms. To read an entry is to realize things you already knew but never could have said, as well as to learn about bygone usages and lineages of present-day implications. You instantly feel smarter and dumber.

Take, for instance, Fernald’s entry for Abhor. As with each word, he lists the synonyms first: abominate, despise, detest, dislike, displease, hate, loathe, nauseate, scorn, shun. He then works them into such brilliant paragraphs as these, reprinted here without permission. (Please–I would be so lucky to get in trouble for this.)

Abhor is stronger than despise, implying a shuddering recoil, especially a moral recoil. Detest expresses indignation, with something of contempt. Loathe implies disgust, physical or moral. We abhor a traitor, despise a coward, detest a liar. We dislike, or are displeased by, an uncivil person. We abhor cruelty, hate tyranny. We loathe a reptile or a flatterer. We abhor Milton’s heroic Satan, but we cannot despise him. We scorn what we hold in contempt; we shun what we dislike and do not want to meet; we abominate what we intensely loathe. If something disgusts us, makes us feel sick, it nauseates us.

To hate, in its strict sense, is to regard with such extreme aversion as to feel a desire to destroy or injure the object of hatred; properly employed it should be the strongest word for the expression of aversion, but it is often loosely used with no stronger meaning than to dislike, as well as for any other of the above words.

-Funk & Wagnalls Standard Handbook of Synonyms, Antonyms, and Prepositions by James C. Fernald

So yeah, people have been using “hate” incorrectly for at least a century. I don’t know what can be done in these hyperbolic times, but it makes you wonder what would happen if we all just took it down a notch to abhor.

According to the Myers-Briggs test I took when I was seventeen years old, I am equal parts thinking and feeling. This doesn’t mean what I think it means, but let me tell you what I feel it means.

The principal drama of my inner life seems to be the tug-of-war between my desire to burn it all the the ground and my inkling that perhaps I ought to first hear the establishment out. My strong gut feelings are almost constantly kept in check by my sense of responsibility to the amount of information that is available to me. Of course, the amount of information available to me is astronomical, but that’s never stopped me from feeling beholden to it.

On one hand, I recognize that my creative output is a natural outcome of this inner turmoil. Many of my projects (the Mozart Festival, So Hot Right Now, even Backyard Violinist) began with a synthesis of vast amounts of information–limitations, inspirations, conversations, and observations–which eventually led to a single idea that “answered” all of it. On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if my equal opportunity stance towards traditions, conventions, norms, advice, opinions, and suggestions only amounts to a whole lot of fool-suffering.

My gut says (quite often) that it’s time for a new way of doing things. My brain responds by saying that, if I ever want my work to be taken seriously, I need to first understand the system I’m throwing off. My gut counters by kicking and screaming. My brain settles the dispute by agreeing to do nothing. For now. Again.

But the most vehement of all the warring voices in my head is the one that assures me that the way things are done is just the way things have been done. That voice has guided me, however gingerly, throughout my entire life. It tends to win out. It’s just that I can’t seem to shake this little dog who’s trailing behind me and barking, “Hear them out! Learn their best practices! You could be wrong! What do you know, anyway?”

I’ve always thought I needed to either get rid of the dog or let it lead the way, but I’m starting to wonder if the dog might have to come along with me forever. If that’s the case, maybe it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to occasionally glance at whatever the dog is yapping at, perhaps even bending down to scratch its head and say, “thanks, little guy,” as long as I stand all the way back up and continue walking toward the horizon.

When doing the right thing isn’t even all that difficult, just do the right thing.

Life is full of gray areas and conundrums, and each of us is endowed with our own charming cocktail of weaknesses, failings, and blind spots, and sometimes doing the right thing requires heroic strength, courage, and sacrifice. But there are other times when it is obvious what we should do, and all it requires is that we briefly wiggle one toe outside of our comfort zone.

For all those times, just do it. She said to herself.

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