If there was a competition for the most popular word in October, my money would be on 'Gravity'. Let’s keep the rules simple, we decide popularity just based on online count of a word most used/searched/hash-tagged in October.
Just for curiosity sake I googled the string 'most popular word' but it looks like this pageantry has not yet made its debut. Imagine if there was a stock index for words based on the trading (conversations) we do as a society; we have been trading money and words for ages but the written and spoken word has no real (quantifiable) value. We could change all that!
I'll leave this bizarre idea to rest at this point and assuming that a competition did exist, this is why I would vote for gravity. Recently the word gravity pulled me in the following three ways:
• The movie Gravity ( the movie will get all the credit for bringing the 3D spot light on the lowly word gravity and getting all the online votes for our champion word. The movie is an impressive visual treat, kudos to the power of imagination and the hard work to execute it)
• FedEx living PSP session ( there are some aspects of corporate culture that are beyond the control of an individual, you just have to live with it. Interesting choice of word there for all things 'Gravity')
• I went skydiving last weekend and with all the talk about weightlessness and free fall gravity was self-implied.
I didn't think of the competition idea when I was suspended in mid-air and I definitely did not sing 'it’s funny how falling feels like flying for a little while' when I was ‘up’ there. My mind was mostly blank at that point, I wasn't really thinking of scary 'what-if' scenarios but in all honesty there was one thought that did cross my mind.
After the adrenaline of the free fall part had subsided, and I was peacefully suspended holding the parachute. I looked down and realized that one of my shoe laces was open and flying freely in the air. With a whoosh the ‘what-if’ thought flashed in my head, what if I trip and fall on my open shoe lace when we land? I wasn’t too pleased with myself to be hanging in mid-air with a lousy open shoe lace.
Later when I went running the next day, I took extra care to lace up my shoes. Did I just develop a new paranoia after the sky diving experience (even when I didn’t trip on my shoe laces)? Hopefully not!
But there was one explanation that I found more plausible. I wasn't too nervous about the jump because in my mind I had reposed all responsibilities to the instructor. He was going to do all the heavyweight lifting and I just had to hang in there. People have different comfort levels when it comes to letting go of control and trust the other person to save your a** when things are beyond your expertise. With tandem skydiving they don’t require you to have any skills to survive, they just expect you to trust the intelligence of another individual and make the jump. I could muster that trust, so I wasn’t too anxious about the jump.
However seeing the open shoe lace, the ownership of responsibility changed, it was something in my control and my mind quickly raced to do the ‘what-if’ scenario evaluation.
So the simple moral of the story is ‘tie your shoelaces’ and the not so simple analogy is about trust, responsibility and letting go. I don’t trust people blindly but when I do, I just let go of my control and no doubt I have landed either upstream or downstream on the Nile and it’s not a just world at both ends and remember it’s the wild Nile..
I have harked a bit far south here, however in the end my final vote is gravity and just to tilt the scale in my favor, I have already used the word 10 times in my blog (there is one in the label) :)
In case you would like to hear the song referenced above:
Just for curiosity sake I googled the string 'most popular word' but it looks like this pageantry has not yet made its debut. Imagine if there was a stock index for words based on the trading (conversations) we do as a society; we have been trading money and words for ages but the written and spoken word has no real (quantifiable) value. We could change all that!
I'll leave this bizarre idea to rest at this point and assuming that a competition did exist, this is why I would vote for gravity. Recently the word gravity pulled me in the following three ways:
• The movie Gravity ( the movie will get all the credit for bringing the 3D spot light on the lowly word gravity and getting all the online votes for our champion word. The movie is an impressive visual treat, kudos to the power of imagination and the hard work to execute it)
• FedEx living PSP session ( there are some aspects of corporate culture that are beyond the control of an individual, you just have to live with it. Interesting choice of word there for all things 'Gravity')
• I went skydiving last weekend and with all the talk about weightlessness and free fall gravity was self-implied.
I didn't think of the competition idea when I was suspended in mid-air and I definitely did not sing 'it’s funny how falling feels like flying for a little while' when I was ‘up’ there. My mind was mostly blank at that point, I wasn't really thinking of scary 'what-if' scenarios but in all honesty there was one thought that did cross my mind.
After the adrenaline of the free fall part had subsided, and I was peacefully suspended holding the parachute. I looked down and realized that one of my shoe laces was open and flying freely in the air. With a whoosh the ‘what-if’ thought flashed in my head, what if I trip and fall on my open shoe lace when we land? I wasn’t too pleased with myself to be hanging in mid-air with a lousy open shoe lace.
Later when I went running the next day, I took extra care to lace up my shoes. Did I just develop a new paranoia after the sky diving experience (even when I didn’t trip on my shoe laces)? Hopefully not!
But there was one explanation that I found more plausible. I wasn't too nervous about the jump because in my mind I had reposed all responsibilities to the instructor. He was going to do all the heavyweight lifting and I just had to hang in there. People have different comfort levels when it comes to letting go of control and trust the other person to save your a** when things are beyond your expertise. With tandem skydiving they don’t require you to have any skills to survive, they just expect you to trust the intelligence of another individual and make the jump. I could muster that trust, so I wasn’t too anxious about the jump.
However seeing the open shoe lace, the ownership of responsibility changed, it was something in my control and my mind quickly raced to do the ‘what-if’ scenario evaluation.
So the simple moral of the story is ‘tie your shoelaces’ and the not so simple analogy is about trust, responsibility and letting go. I don’t trust people blindly but when I do, I just let go of my control and no doubt I have landed either upstream or downstream on the Nile and it’s not a just world at both ends and remember it’s the wild Nile..
I have harked a bit far south here, however in the end my final vote is gravity and just to tilt the scale in my favor, I have already used the word 10 times in my blog (there is one in the label) :)
In case you would like to hear the song referenced above:
Driftwood did drift... only this time it was gravity guiding it.. :p
ReplyDeleteyeah.. always looking to drift some more:)
ReplyDeleteNice review. It has some of the best visuals I've seen since Avatar, and continued to have me more and more involved with the story as it went along.
ReplyDelete