Four Words That Make Me Suspicious of Myself When I Say Them

There are a few words that raise a red flag when I catch myself saying them, at least when I’m not totally preoccupied.

Not that all instances of these words are dubious, but I do find I that whenever I need to make use of them, there’s a good chance I’m being at least a little presumptuous, simple-minded, or sneaky. They raise a similar red flag when I hear or read them too.

They aren’t “bad” words, but they do lend themselves to a certain kind of self-deception. They often hint at more going on.

“Wish”

I find myself using the word “wish” when I’ve decided I don’t like something the way it is, yet I’m not actually doing anything about it. There’s no real reason to declare my wishes. Whenever I start a sentence with “I just wish…” feel free to ignore me, I’m only wasting your time. My whiny face has probably made you tune out anyway.

Whenever I let the phrase “I wish” escape my mouth, all I really have to say is this: “I’m not happy with things the way they are. I would be happy if they were like this. So there.”

Not only is it useless for changing the circumstances, but it reinforces the myth to which I’ve momentarily fallen prey: that my happiness is dependent on my circumstances only and has nothing to do with my attitude. It’s a bitter little plea that life isn’t what I want it to be in this particular moment, and a dead giveaway that I’m not prepared to do anything about it right now.

Wishing is a desperate, self-defensive behavior. It gives you a little hit of relief from a reality you don’t want to deal with, but it sure doesn’t move things along.

Of course, in those moments, I’m too consumed by my fantasies to see that my attitude is usually the biggest and most damning feature of the present circumstances. If my attitude sucks, the circumstances suck. But acknowledging that would mean I have to be responsible for it, and it’s easier to instead wish for the cavalry to appear on the horizon and save me.

“Try”

I don’t know about you, but I know I insert the word “try” into a sentence when I’m not actually willing to take on the responsibility of promising I’ll do something. Yet I’m still willing to pretend I at least have the intention of doing it — somewhere in my mind.

I’ll try to call and ask about that. I’ll try to exercise every day. I’ll try to get it done on Friday after work.

It means: I might end up doing that if it’s easier than I expect it to be.

Try is the ultimate catch-all qualifier for anyone looking to commit absolutely nothing to a particular effort. It’s not even particularly sneaky anymore. We know what it means.

It’s so over-quoted on the web, but it’s too fitting to leave out Master Yoda’s advice from back in 1980: Do or do not. There is no “try”. George Lucas must have stolen that from someone. It’s too profound for a muppet.

“Should”

You should clean this place up. I should exercise more. They should make this illegal. They should fix this wonky table.

Like wish, should is often used as a way of placing responsibility for your quality of life on other people or the universe at large. Whenever humans encounter some kind of inconvenience or difficulty, the first thought is always something resembling “Wouldn’t it be nice if this moment was easier than it is?” The mind searches for a way to characterize oneself as the victim of some unthinkable injustice, and a should-based thought is born. In our mind’s eye we step momentarily into an alternate universe where everything feels just and right to us.

One of the more common forms is “They should outlaw [whatever thing is most unpleasant to you at the moment].” I’ve even heard people say (including myself) things like, “Anybody who cuts in line should be shot.” Clearly many of these should-reactions are not meant to be honest appeals for a better world, just a little fantasy of a parallel world where this particular problem isn’t happening to you right now, because in that world things are the way they should be.

Most shoulds are really just desperate pleas for your moment to be less troublesome to you, whether your trouble stems from a tiny inconvenience (such as someone parking too close to you) or a profoundly disturbing aspect of human behavior (such as violence.)

Now, just because we recognize how absurd it is to respond to troubling circumstances only by “shoulding” about people and circumstances around us, it doesn’t mean that the situation is fair, or that we can’t do anything to change it. The problem might represent a real, glaring injustice that causes a lot of suffering for people, and which could potentially be changed with some effort.

Yet the first reaction to any troubling situation is almost always to simply declare that this moment *should* be something closer to what would sit right with you, and most of the time we’re not prepared to do any more than just say so.

So in my wiser, more centered moments, I don’t bring out the word should unless I’m prepared to make it the way it ‘should’ be. Usually I’m not.

“Deserve”

This one can get ugly. I’ve almost cut this one out of my vocabulary completely because I’ve found so few instances where it isn’t absurdly presumptuous.

Any smoker who gets cancer deserves it. Criminals deserve whatever happens to them in prison. Charlie Sheen deserves an overdose.

What does a person have to do to “deserve” some horrible fate? How does one know what amount of “caused pain” warrants X amount of “deserved pain” and why do we assume that we (or anyone) are in a position to make a meaningful assessment of it?

Even among reasonable people, deserve gets out of hand quickly, because we tend to make our most sweeping assessments when we’re really worked up emotionally. I’m not a violent person, but at times I’ve convinced myself that somebody who tags a fence deserves a serious beating, that careless people deserve to get in horrible accidents, that drug addicts deserve misery.

Deserve is really just a more specific type of should, one which refers to what fates people ought to experience. Most violence is rationalized with “deserve”.

Deserve also serves as a way of becoming more comfortable with tragedy by making a “closed loop” of it. Sure, that guy got run over by a forklift, but he was being pretty careless, so…

The coldest and most thoughtless form is is “Anyone who _______ deserves ______.” We laugh at the Darwin Awards, as if any instance of exceptionally poor judgment really deserves death. Anyone dumb enough to get soaked for thousands in a sweepstakes phone scam deserves it, right? Most of them are senior citizens.

It’s gratifying to decide what people deserve, particularly if we know nothing about them except for the one behavior we witnessed or heard about. This is what mainstream news is all about. The typical story is like this: “Something terrible happened today, many people suffering, who deserves the blame?”

And that’s the fun part, the payoff. The discussion surrounding who deserves to be ostracized, fired or killed is always more attractive than the one about how we can help. This kind of talk is now so pervasive on television, it’s become a new pastime: the self-satisfaction of attributing blame to people we don’t know over great distances, working only from tiny slivers of single-sourced information.

The more distant we are from the person, the easier it is to decide what they deserve. If the smoker who dies of cancer is some guy on the news, he deserves it. But if he’s your uncle or your dad, you know it’s never as simple as that.

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Have you noticed any other words you say (or hear) that raise a red flag for you?

Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography

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