Musings

Often, the most daunting task is the one that needs to be taken. Most people know this, either intuitively or explicitly. And yet, most people don't do what they know they should. Why? The simple answer is that "doing" is incredibly scary. Instead of actually pursuing the things we want or even know will get us closer to the best outcome for our lives, we choose to spend time in turmoil, agonizing over every detail and somehow never feeling "sure" enough. None of what I'm writing is new or novel, but due to circumstances in my own life, I've been forced to grapple with this phenomenon more.  Ultimately, everything has a risk, some are bigger than others, of course, but what I've had to remind myself of multiple times over the past couple of weeks is that inaction also carries risk. But even if one were to completely ignore opportunity costs, in reality, the position you are in today is as similarly unguaranteed as the position you could be in if you

Over the years, I've noticed a strange trend in how we describe and talk about unpleasant things. Every couple of years or so, a new term replaces an old term that has now become "problematic." Even if these words are very literal descriptions of a phenomenon (like mental retardation, for example). It seems two things happen in tandem (but not always necessarily) to force a change in how a word is understood by broader society.  The first thing is shortening, which is a normal thing that happens in slang and the transformation of words. So, mental retardation, or someone being mentally retarded, changes from a two-word phrase to a single-word "retardation" or "retarded." And the second thing is that the word begins to be used pejoratively instead of descriptively.  For the record, I'm talking strictly about the use and enforcement of different terms in the colloquial language that is spoken by the layman. I'm sure there could be some relevant c