Vocabulary
I was bemoaning to God today the lack of optimism I see in the people I deal with, or whose writing I read, on a day to day basis. It was just starting to seem to me like all the positive thoughts were being crushed out, leaving just the husk of humanity behind.
So then God asked me if I knew the word “energize.” Sure, I told him. Then he asked me how many other people knew it. I told him pretty much everyone; I told him I thought that had been true even before some marketing flunky had decided to use the word to label a new brand of alkaline batteries.
Then he asked me if I knew a word that meant the opposite. “Enervate,” I told him and then he asked how many people I thought knew that word. Damned few, I suspected.
So didn’t that give me a feeling that optimism was more pervasive than pessimism?
I gave in.
Then later, after God left, I thought of the word “exhaust.”
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