3. Verbigerate
To verbigerate is … no, not to make a verb out of a non-verb, although that guess makes complete sense.
To verbigerate is to obsessively repeat meaningless words and phrases. It originated in the mental illness context, but has now overflowed those boundaries.
Of course, words by themselves are not meaningless - each one was invented to communicate meaning - even the egad! and the ouch! and the flibbertygibbet!
However, words are made meaningless through excessive, superficial, perhaps even dishonest, use.
An obvious example that comes to mind in the present times is the phrase ‘I am not racist.’ It is claimed by one and all without a moment’s thought about implicit biases or historic evidence. When we verbigerate ‘I am not racist’, it actually ends up contributing towards (unintentional) racism. It destroys any chance of actually making that statement come true through honest self-reflection and constant self-education. Indeed, ‘I am not racist’ has become just another verbigeration, a meaningless phrase.
In a smaller context, in recent years, I have started to examine the word ‘busy’. I have caught myself verbigerating ‘Busy’ ‘So busy’ and ‘I am busy’ as an instant response to ‘How are you?’ ‘How was your day?’ ‘How’s life?’
I have a suspicion that at some point in time, my ‘busy’ stopped being an honest, carefully thought-out statement of fact and became a statement of fashion or habit. Add the right emphasis on each syllable of the word ‘busy’, and it brings out a similar response in the listener - we have an instant connection. You are busy. I am busy. Check.
I wonder if being busy is like a feather in the cap. So that even if one is reasonably occupied in the daily dos of life (our choices for the most part) - such as job, home chores, social outings, relaxation - a perfectly respectable, well-lived meaningful day - it sounds better if it has been a ‘busy’ day. The value of the day and the person living the day somehow seems higher with the ‘busy’ tag. Consider the opposite narrative - if you are not busy, then … well, we are all convinced that we know what a not-busy mind is. So we continue to verbigerate “I am so busy” which very likely will serve as open invitation to some very real stress.
During my experiment, there were definitely some periods of longer work hours (transition to a virtual classroom or meeting a publishing deadline) or longer hours on personal projects (60 day yoga challenges, elaborate theme parties with friends) or well, let’s face it longer hours of chilling (Netflix binges - Newsroom, Suits and all night read of Where the Crawdads Sing), but they were more like spikes in the daily living graph and not the constant high burning-red plateau I made it sound to be.
And so, I decided to stop verbigerating ‘I am busy’ that only fed my sense of self and daily stress, and decided instead to feed my sense of wellness, which actually moves and adjusts somewhere in the middle of the continuum between busy and idle. I am hopeful that this little change might actually help me better anticipate and manage my true busi-ness.
What about you?
What is your favorite phrase to verbigerate? Or what verbigeration have you noticed in your world?
