#827 Zed and Zen

I love contemplating words. Rooting out their meanings. Tracing their origins. Wondering about their beginnings. It gives me an almost zen-like state of awareness and joy.
Like contemplating how one letter changes zen to zed. A state of nirvana-like meditation to the English way to say the letter Z. We in America say “zee” when we pronounce the letter. For reasons totally unknown, Brits and Canadians refer to the letter as zed.
Sounds like a French father threatening to whip his child. Take heem out to dee zed.
Or contemplating words like “vision.” In a time when America needs a real vision for the future, everybody and his brother is coming up with ways to use the word vision in a less than visionary way.
The other day I heard about this enterprise that was being totally redone. Changed from beginning to end. Reworked and replanned and replaced. Or as they put it, revisioned.
Nice word. Unfortunately it sounds like they changed history too—as in a revisionist accounting of the civil war or something. Historians that don’t follow the common white patriarchal spin are disparagingly called revisionists by certain conservatives.
Or how all kinds of companies now feel it’s necessary to have both a mission statement and a vision statement. Why?
They look about the same to me. Can’t my mission be to follow my vision and can’t we put into one statement so we can get this boring retreat over with and get back to our jobs?
Do we really have to spend a day off site team-building and visioning when there’s urgent stuff we should be doing back at the office?
Here’s my vision, let’s get to work.
Finally, I saw a sign with what appeared to be vision statement on a store the other day. It said the place “guaranteed unmatched performance.”
Um, “unmatched” just means no one matches it. It doesn’t guarantee it’s good.
The current president’s incredibly low popularity ratings are unmatched too.
I guess his vision turned out to be cloudy.
I bet he’ll be happy to retire in a couple of months and catch a couple of zeds.
America, ya gotta love it.