I find it fascinating that the word friend and the word free both come from the same Indo-European root word which meant to love.   It turned into the Old English word freod which meant affection, friendship, peace.

Love and freedom and friendship.  Such a beautiful combination.  And so deeply ingrained in humanity’s DNA.

It makes sense to me.  A friend helps free you from pain, sorrow, worry, loss.  A friend helps you be truly free in the fullest sense of the word.

Free to be yourself, free to laugh, free to say anything, free to tell everything, free to believe, free to grow, to try, to go for it.

A friend helps set you free.

My favorite definition of the word friend is someone on the same side of the struggle as you are.

I love this definition because that’s when I really feel the friendship, and that’s when it really COUNTS.  When there’s a struggle and someone is on your side.

May you have many friends and enjoy much freedom!

Love,

Ingrid

 

 

The Irish really got this right.  Their expression of “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” captures one of the most fundamental truths I know.  While most people (especially Americans) believe it’s the mouth that smiles, in truth, it’s the eyes.

My father was not a big smiler.  He was a very old-world European, true gentleman in the finest sense of the word.  Exceptionally dignified, almost like royalty.  Yes, he smiled, but he was not a BIG smiler, if you know what I mean.  He smiled from time to time.

But his eyes smiled.  Always.

I had no doubt he loved me, just the way he looked at me.

I had the good fortune to work in Ireland over the course of 10 years, spent a lot of time there.  It’s one of my all time favorite countries to work in.  I love the Irish, especially their sense of humor and warmth.  It’s the land “of a thousand welcomes”, that it is for sure.

On this St. Patrick’s Day, I salute the Irish!

May your eyes find many reasons to smile!

Love,

Ingrid

Someone once called me perspicacious.  I didn’t know what it meant so I looked it up in the dictionary.  It quickly became one of my all-time favorite compliments.

Perspicacious means you have the penetrating ability to see through.  It came from the Latin perspicax which even 2000 years ago meant having the power to see through.

Perceptive is the ability to see.  Perspicacious is the ability to see through.  It’s way more ability than perceptive.   Intelligence is what you do with it.

We need a word like perspicacious.  Penetrating ability to see through.

I love this ability.  I love this word. It’s such an important word because it’s such an important ability.  Even the Romans 2000 years ago knew it was a power.

When someone is acting badly, it’s the power to see through that and see the good in them.

It’s the power to see through difficulty and fear, to see the worthwhileness of the effort.

It’s the power to see through the artful smile and see the heart of cold stone.

The power to see the beauty in the babushka grandmother.

The power to see their full meaning when someone is at a loss for words.

The power to see through all the justifications and find the real reason something went wrong.

The power to live on a planet where war is the norm and see beautiful humanity through all the cruelty.

I spend much of my life separating the true from the false.  I think most people do. I think most of us are looking for the truth, in everything.  Certainly in people and relationships.  I don’t think I could ever be too perspicacious.

Sometimes we’re the only one in the room who is perspicacious.  Everyone else is buying the false wisdom of the day.  We’re the ones speaking up with what we see.  Not easy to speak up, but it’s the perspicacious who make things go right when they’re wrong, the perspicacious who build new civilizations.

Perspicacity enables us to find the truth and keep our compass always pointed at true North.

May your perspicacious nature give you great joy and enable you to do great good.

Love,

Ingrid

 

 

My writing table at home has 4 dictionaries (including the original 1828 dictionary of the American language) and 2 dictionaries of word origins.  I love plunging into them and following where they lead, through endless corridors of thought and back in time.

Looking up honor leads to pleasure-filled explorations of esteem, dignity, reputation, character, nobleness of mind, then tracing its roots back to the word honorem in Cicero’s Latin.  The meaning of this word hasn’t changed in over 2,000 years.   I thrill to the idea that honor is so ingrained in who we are, even thousands of years ago the most popular writer of his time used the same word we do today when he penned the words, Facultatem sine honorem est inutilia (Ability without honor is useless).  A concept I quite agree with.

Words to me are pure magic.  They empower us to be magicians.

What is a word?  A symbol.   Made of letters if written and sounds if spoken.  A word is not the real thing – the word for ocean is not an ocean.  You can’t eat the word ice cream.

We use words to relay our ideas.

An idea is a thought about something as opposed to its physical solidity.   Its derivation is the Latin word video which means “to see”.  It’s the thought you have, what you hold or see in your mind.  It could be your purpose or intention, an impression of the physical universe, your desire for a future, an emotional experience, an image.  Almost anything.  What’s important about ideas is that they’re not in the physical universe.

Here’s what’s amazing.  When you communicate, you take something that is not in the physical universe and relay it over to another person so that that person gets it, so they see exactly and completely what you see.  So they get and understand your meaning.

That’s where words come in.  Words embody concepts and ideas.  Embody means give a bodily form to.  Bodily means a physical structure.  So, words embody concepts and ideas, meaning they give concepts and ideas a body so these ideas can be visible in the physical universe.

Don’t tell me that’s not magic.

Magic is the art or science by which surprising and wonderful effects are produced.  It comes from the Old Persian word magush which meant to have power.

Words are how we produce surprising and wonderful effects and through which we have power.  Exhilarating.

May you produce many surprising and wonderful effects and be exhilaratingly powerful.

Love,

Ingrid