Weekday Musings - Thus Spake the People

-

“Our startup is on an incredible journey.”

“I love the energy of this café.”

“We need to change the narrative.”

“She brings great vibes to the team.”

“This is a safe space to share.”

“Our brand is built on authentic connections.”

 What’s common to all these sentences?

They sound familiar, even agreeable - yet they lean on fashionable words that have been used so often, they’ve lost their freshness. Journey, energy, narrative, vibe, space, authentic  - all once vivid and meaningful, now drift through conversations like background music we no longer notice. They’re bandied about without much sense of their depth – as if people wish to sound chic, in tune with the times, or intellectual.

 Now imagine if we simply said:

 “Our startup is growing fast.”

“I like this café.”

“We need to see things differently.”

“She works well with everyone.”

“This is a friendly place to talk.”

“Our brand is trustworthy.”

The meaning stays almost the same, but the noise disappears. And it’s not just these. Emotion, empathy, empowerment, mindfulness, sustainability - noble in intent, but often pressed into service to make ordinary thoughts sound profound. Somehow they detract from the main message and draw us towards a vague idea, leaving us to figure out what it actually means.

Why does this happen? Perhaps because words travel faster than thought. When a leader, influencer, or brand strikes a chord with a new expression, it soon becomes a badge of insight. But with repetition, it loses edge and honesty - like a coin whose embossing has faded from too many exchanges.

Once a few popular voices start using them, the rest of us follow -  thus spake the people, and the echo goes on.

Sometimes, abstraction also comes to our rescue when we’re unsure what we really mean or lack the confidence to speak plainly. Saying a business is an emotion or a workplace a space feels bigger, softer, safer, but it blurs meaning rather than sharpening it.

But in a different league is officialese like this, which our surveyors were required to use, " ...from our preliminary calculations it would appear that the flange would be somewhat overstressed ". It had a purpose, more legal, than a linguistic preference.

Language, of course, is alive and always evolving. But it helps to pause and ask whether our words still carry weight or merely reverberate as echoes of others.

So, the next time you find yourself saying, “I love the energy of this place,” maybe try saying what you truly mean -  “It feels warm,” “It lifts my mood,”or “It’s cheerful.” Those plain words might just sound fresher than all the vibes in the world.

 After all, even words need rest once in a while.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Weekend Musings: What One Life Taught Me About Peace

-
Image
  Remembering Albert Schweitzer For reasons I cannot fully explain, Albert Schweitzer came back to me recently. My first encounter with him was in childhood, when I was barely ten or twelve. I remember a book — blue in colour — far beyond my reading ability at that age. I remember his photograph inside. I remember that it spoke of peace and of service to humanity. I understood neither in any meaningful way, yet something stayed. Perhaps children recognise sincerity before they understand ideas. Life moved on. Over five decades, his name would surface now and then — in passing references, in conversations, in lists of Nobel Peace Prize winners — but I never found the time, or perhaps the inner readiness, to go deeper. And yet, the impression never faded. Today, that unfinished encounter seems to ask for closure. Albert Schweitzer was many things: theologian, philosopher, musician, doctor. But what sets him apart is not achievement; it is choice. At a time when intellectual recognit...
Read more

Weekend Musings: The Leap of the Frog — A Moment in Haiku

-
Image
 An old silent pond— a frog jumps into the pond, splash! Silence again. This weekend’s Musings arose from an invitation to reflect on these lines by Matsuo Bashō. What began as an invitation soon turned into a gentle challenge, as it became clear that the poem invites many ways of seeing. It can even invite silence, as we honour the stillness of the pond. The image is simple, almost bare. A still pond. A sudden leap. A brief splash. And then silence again. Nothing is explained, nothing is concluded. What is offered is a moment, complete in itself. Yet, being a Musing, I must still arrive at my own reading. In these lines, Bashō draws us into a world where there is no past or future — both constructs of the mind, or the ego. He lives entirely moment to moment, in full awareness of it. The past becomes nothing more than memory, a storehouse of conditioning, biases, and habits. The future is merely the drama projected from that past. In such a state of awareness, action is no longer ...
Read more

Election Day Musing: My Keemti Vote

-
Image
Having just completed my duty, or shall we say my right, by casting my vote, a few observations and thoughts came to mind. The walk to the polling booth is something I take almost every few days, so I was not expecting anything eventful to happen. But I was in for a surprise. Unknown people were greeting me and smiling. One particular person, whom I had neither met nor seen before, actually called out my name and said, “Mahimkar saheb, 4 number lakshat theva.” I noticed regular shopkeepers and party workers standing in groups, and it was not difficult to guess their affiliations. Another thing I noticed was a white band across the road with “200 meters” written on it. Closer to the center, it read “100 meters”. When I had seen this a few days earlier, I had not known what it was for, but today it became clear. Strangely, I noticed one more thing—the streets were extra clean, as if one day’s clean roads would influence our decision! The center itself had standard security measures, and...
Read more