Playing with Words
As I wait for the final results of COP 26, I have to find something else to write about to end the week. I am taking a course online and the subject yesterday was “Interiority” - not a word that I ever use. That sent me on a search which I posted on the course site - and I’ll share something of it here:
I'm going to have some fun with words. I became curious about the term, "interiority", because before starting the course - or perhaps before reading Thomas Berry - it was not part of my everyday vocabulary. Canadians, like me, straddle both British and American English. I started with the hard copy of my Concise Oxford Dictionary published in 1982. The word wasn't there. I moved on to Collins British dictionary online to find this: "the quality of being focused on one's inner life and identity". If the Oxford English Dictionary had allowed me to see when the word first entered the language, I would have gone there, but there is a paywall. Collins did help with a diagram. It showed brief use for the first time in 1778 - 0.07% - and then the word languished or fell off completely until 1978 when it took off at 0.33% use. But that’s not a very big number either.
I moved on to the American Merriam-Webster. It had this to say: Definition of interiority
1: interior quality or character
2: inner life or substance : psychological existence
When we are little kids, using big words gives us a sense of authority and superiority - and it also makes us part of an in-group. For me, one of the challenges of Berry’s New Story - is telling it in words that other people understand. "Story" is a simpler word. For more fun, I went back to Collins and tried translating story into French, German and Italian. In each case it brings up a native word in the language histoire, Geschichte, storia. When I tried the same thing with Interiority, this is what came up - intériorité, Innerlichkeit, Interiorità. The German seemed to have a better word of their own. The others sounded as though they adopted the English one.
When we watched Robin Wall Kimmerer this week, several in the course commented on her warmth and simplicity as it comes through in the sound of her voice and her demeanor. It's isn't as though she can't use big words when she chooses to. I've just finished two of her books, Gathering Moss and Braiding Sweetgrass. Her naming of mosses reveals a scholar who can joust with any biologist and win hands down. For me, interiority has a cold and rather scientific sound - like an empty and sparsely furnished room. But this playful research brought a phrase that I can work with - "inner life" - because it sounds as though it comes from the wisdom of the heart. It still combines an adjective and a noun. To spur myself and others to act, I have to turn a phrase into a verb. The video for this section of the course on the global brain with the outline of the human body is also a big help in showing us what it means to live - both inside and outside our skins.
A good teacher once heard a student say, "I feel very creative". The teacher asked "So what are you going to create?" "Oh I didn't mean that I was going to do anything about it. It's just how I feel today".
That's why I never use the word "creativity" either. But "create" is a verb I like.