Word of the Day

Here is a helpful word for all you adventurers out there—and frankly for those of you who simply have no idea where you are going. 

Coddiwomple (verb). To travel purposefully toward an as-yet-unknown destination.

It goes in my cranial category of delightful mouthfuls such as discombobulate and circumambulate.  The only difference is that it has no derivation from the Latin, at least not so far as I know.  If anyone does, however, discover that the Romans were speaking in such manner, I for one want to know at once.

In the meantime, let us carry on bravely, coddiwompling with all the courage we can muster into the darkness of the uncertain future.

Me, Myself, and I Muse on Cynicism

I: Those wiser than I would have it that age must of necessity bring cynicism; but I, perhaps through fault of youth, must disagree.  Cynicism seems rather the result of a loss of hope, a small step forward on the path of despair.  Must I, simply by repeated and unwilled rotation about the sun tread down that path?

Myself: Well becoming a martyr might offer a simple alternative.

I: I don't believe that is in my power.

Me: What after all is so bad about cynicism?  Is it so much to be feared?  Perhaps it lends its weight to the wisdom of the aging.

I: Is cynicism then the cost of wisdom?

Me: The two oft seem entwined.

Myself: 'Tis a petty price to pay if it were for the greatest treasure of all, as doubtless wisdom is.

I: Yet I would not pay it.

Myself: Then have it not.

Me: How harsh a saying.  Perhaps you have already begun to taste deeply of the well of cynicism.

Myself: Nay, but a certain healthy cynicism keeps one from expecting too much of others, like a dash of salt upon a meal.

I: There is truth in that.  I, by nature, am certainly inclined to cynicism: I expect the worst, but still hope for the best.

Me: Hope—there you have the key of it.

Myself: As long as the key opens a door, I find no fault with it.

I: If I look at Myself—

Myself: I?

I: Yes, I that is—I cannot help but see that flawed and cowardly as I am, there is no hope and cynicism is the natural response.  Certainly a lifetime of effort spent in exhausting my strength in seeking to produce some fruitful change in the world would leave me as dark and gloomy a cynic as ever was.

Me: Then not to become a cynic must mean the existence of something beyond Me.

Myself: Granted.  You need only look about you.

I: Hope grounded in the world, in mankind, in Myself is worthless.

Myself: Sadly, true.

Me: Open the doors then to the world beyond Me.

Myself: And Myself.

I: And I.