Word Prisms

Failure The concept of failure became a question for me while listening to a podcast of This American Life called Regrets, I’ve had a few.   The title comes from the song My Way that was written by Paul Anka and made famous by Frank Sinatra.   There were three stories in the podcast.   The first was about a young woman who regrets picking on her younger sister in childhood.   One particular moment stands out in her mind.   While being video-taped, she was put on trial for hitting her younger sister with a broom.   Witnesses were called and questioned and the verdict given by her father was not guilty even though she clearly cut to her sister’s head with the broom and the resulting gush of blood had obviously been her fault.   Ever since, the woman has been wracked with feelings of guilt and regret which honestly, as the eldest in my family, I don’t understand.   I have long since forgotten the numerous beatings I gave my brother and rationa...

Back in my fourth year of university, a buddy and I would often go out for a beer after a night of studying, as a reward so to speak, and on one such night, as we’re walking along in the dark with those faint yellow lights they use to light the U of A campus, I turned to my friend and I said, “why do we have language?” and he kinda looked at me funny but not like I’m completely crazy ‘cause he was used to hearing these kind of questions from me and knew they must have come from somewhere so he says, “well, when we get to the bar, how else are you going order a beer and maybe some cheezies to go with it.”   And I nodded my head because his answer had been so ridiculously straight forward and commonsensical but it really wasn’t what I meant at all.      You see, I’d recently become interested in Zen Buddhism and meditation and clearing the mind of all thought and so, I wondered, if peace of mind is achieved by clearing the mind of all thought, why have language at ...