words – Tipsy Typer

The Healing Power of a Well-Placed Curse

My feet seem to have an uncanny ability to always find the one missing lego or the edge of the table leg I wasn’t paying enough attention to. I am not exactly what you would call a delicate flower; I am clumsy and uncoordinated, and when I hurt myself I can have the mouth of a sailor. If you see me in my regular daily life I seem pleasant enough, but watch me stub my toe once and you’ll hear a string of curse words you didn’t even know existed, laid out in colorful combinations you never would have thought to try. They usually don’t make sense, and my face will probably turn beet red after I realize what exactly I said in front of you; but you will walk away feeling thoroughly educated.

I never put much thought into this knee-jerk reaction, I just knew that yelling my obscenities and jumping up and down on my good leg made me feel better. But as it turns out, there is actual science behind this little fluke of humanity (studies like this make me kick myself internally for not joining the scientific community as my own career path). It is no secret that words have power; they can evoke tearful compassion, blood boiling anger, they can inspire uprisings and tear down governments. Words have the ability to lift the spirit or break the soul. Swearing itself evokes an emotional response; if you have ever been yelled at by a parent or glared at by a co-worker after allowed a particularly colorful four-letter beauty slip from your lips, then you have witnessed the response firsthand. We have created our own taboo language and imbued it with power, determining on a whim what is socially acceptable and what is not. If our response to mere words is so strong that we have created our own form of self-censorship, then what else can they do? Once again, science swoops in with the answers.

Researchers at Keele University’s School of Psychology were curious about the potential physical effects of swearing, and so they conducted their own experiment. This little test has been repeatedly replicated, and even found its way onto the TV show Mythbusters. They took 64 lucky undergrad volunteers and had them all partake in the ice water test. Each participant was asked to submerge their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as they possibly could while repeating a single word. For a control, participants were asked to do this while repeating a fairly innocuous word describing a table. And then we got to the good part; those involved in the study were then told to do the exact same thing, only this time they choose whatever curse word their heart desired. As it turns out, when repeating their favorite swear word, participants were able to hold their hand in the ice water for substantially longer than they could with a regular mundane word. In fact, they were able to tack on an average of 40 additional seconds to their time. As we all may know from plunging our hand into a slightly-melted cooler looking for the perfect beverage during the summer months: an additional 40 seconds in once water is a long time. After repeated experiments, they were able to confidently declare that, yes, the act of cursing actually did have a pain-lessening effect.

Scientists aren’t sure why this link exists, but they suspect that the act of cursing triggers our natural ‘fight or flight’ response. The heart rate of volunteers accelerated, which suggests that the amygdala was being activated (this part of the brain is responsible for the fight or flight reaction). It might account for a slight increase in aggression; and anytime we physically experience an increase like this, our body is internally preparing for a fight- which means it is bracing itself for possible pain to be inflicted on us. As a measure of self-protection, it dampens the pain receptors so you can focus on what you need to do to get out of your sticky situation.

But why curse words specifically? Why couldn’t you just scream ‘pop tart, French fry, monkey , handlebar, potato’ at the top of your lungs instead? It’s interesting to note that curses themselves work differently than traditional language. Studies suggest that they originate in a different, older part of our brains. They are more closely tied to the emotional centers in the right side of the brain, whereas most language production takes place in the left cerebral hemisphere. This is something that can be seen in certain cases of brain damage where most language function deteriorates, and yet the patient can still scream the f-word quite clearly and at regular intervals. Pretty crazy, isn’t it?

Now, before you foul-mouthed fiends start jumping for joy, there is a little bit of fine print here. As it turns out, the more frequently we curse, the less emotionally potent these words become. This translates into your physical reaction as well. Which means if you curse like a sailor all damn day, then when you drop a slew of f-bombs after stubbing your toe, their pain-dampening effect won’t be nearly as strong as the girl who sits 3 desks down from you at the office and only says ‘snickerdoodles’ when she gets a paper cut. When she finally lets a good four-letter friend fall from her lips, the effect will be stronger. If you over-use your curse words, you are left with just plain words. You’ll be like Tony Stark without the Iron Man suite- it might do something, but it won’t be enough. So please, swear responsibly my friends.

Reading Dangerously

Books have the ability to shape minds and sculpt opinions, they are as diverse as the people we share this beautiful world with. They can change us if we are willing to step out of our comfort zone and challenge ourselves and our beliefs. What we choose to read will show in who we become as people, and, as creators, it will become apparent in what we bring into this world. Whatever your chosen medium is, you have the power to make an impact with it, to become timeless and honest. I want to write books that change people, I want to pen articles that make others question what they thought, or provide them with a glimmer of hope that they are not alone, that they have an ally in a world that has too few. I want to write Dangerously, and to do that, I must read the same way.

When I was in high school we had weekly opinion pieces to write and then group debates on a myriad of subjects we originally knew nothing about, and a few key topics our teachers were brave enough to let us choose ourselves. One of their favorite things to do: make us argue a side we deeply opposed. Why? Because it forces you to learn, it compels you to challenge your own views and opinions and, in effect, discover a sense of compassion for those you disagree with.

It is no secret that we live in an interesting time; though not as unique as we may imagine it to be. We have hot button issues that compel passions within individuals that are unrivaled. Passion is a double-edged sword, and in a world of misinformation, skewed propaganda, and sensationalization: passion can be a unforgiving and dangerous blade. It seems that searching for information and challenging our own thoughts has become too difficult a task. It is far too easy to get swept away in the sea of words we have billowing out around us.

At the end of 2016 I started working through some of the books I’ve left idling on my shelf, books that ignited a curiosity and passion inside of me, some of them made me question my current belief system, and others managed to reinforce my opinions with information that I did not previously possess. They gave me a fire, and a deeper understanding of the world around me. And they reminded me of how complicated and colorful our world really is.

I believe in tolerance and compassion, but there are many cultures and social issues I still only had limited knowledge of. I felt unable to voice my opinion in fear that I was missing something. At the same time, I feel we all have a social obligation to help one another and defend each other from unwarranted hate and preconceived notions.

It was my desire to challenge and educate myself that led to a very specific goal this year, one that I suspect will continue far longer than these 12 coming months. The challenge: to read dangerously, to confront my own views and biases and force them to make a case, to expand my knowledge and, with that, my understanding of this complicated world that we live in. It is a year to remember those long-forgotten facets of our history and find the correlation with our current troubles. It is a chance to propel ourselves to be better people.

I was originally thinking about monthly themes, and while I may eventually transition that way, right now I am simply enjoying the extensive and random selection of books I own but have been sitting unread. I have books covering all subjects: history, religion, race issues, sexuality, the sciences, biographies of strong women, athletes, and world leaders, philosophy, classics and modern tales that shape us in unseen ways. I have books that I suspect will support my current beliefs, and ones that I have a strong inclination will test them.

Now, I have hopes that this will be somewhat interactive, though I think it will evolve a bit as we go. I have just finished Voyage of the Damned, a phenomenal book I will be doing a follow-up post on in the coming week (spoiler: I highly recommend it). If you would like to see the 2016 books that inspired this, feel free to peek here: Tipsy Typer’s Top Ten Year-End Literary Lovelies.

My current selections include an overview of world history in the form of The New Penguin History of the World because, well, I am a bit rusty and I’ve tried to read this lengthy tome many times- darn it, I will do it this time! Also, I am finally reading The Quran; I’ve always had an interest in religious studies and have read the texts of other religions, but have never made it to this one. Thus far it has been very eye-opening in terms of some of its similarities to a few other predominant religions. I think a big part of understanding and having compassion stems with educating yourself on what is important and fundamental to other people. Religion is a driving force for many, and learning to respect that and understand the similarities as well as the differences will go a long way on our road to acceptance and appreciation. I also just started a promising new read that follows my underlying theme: Threading My Prayer Rug.

But I want to ask you all: what suggestions do you have for me? What books have changed you, expanded your views or made you ask questions? The genre, the subject matter, geared towards children or adults- there are no boundaries, any book that made you feel something, learn something, or challenged you in some way; I’d love to hear about it and add it to my list. And if you care to immerse yourself in your own Reading Dangerously challenge, feel free to comment; I think sharing this experiment with others would only help us all grow.

Cheers, my friends, may we forever find the strength within ourselves to keep growing and changing.

Tsundoku: How the Japanese have named my soul

Language is a beautifully complex creation of the human mind. Individual cultures and the languages that they speak feed and thrive off of one another. Therefore, it is not so unheard of that many of these dialects will evolve in different, though similar, directions. There is a beautiful thing when you find a word that does not easily translate into your own native tongue. Usually it is something that you deeply understand, a word that makes you go ‘aha! why don’t we have this already?’ Take ‘mamihlapinatapei,’ a Yagan word that is best described as ‘the wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start.’ I’m guessing this is a look that you can picture right now. And yet in the English language we have nothing simple to describe this scenario. And then there is the Yiddish word ‘shlimazl’ which roughly means a perpetually unlucky person. What about ‘jayus,’ an Indonesian word that means ‘a joke so poorly told and so unfunny that one cannot help but laugh.’ Personally, I am an expert in the jayus. In fact, I think that’s going to be a new staple in my vocabulary. I find the study of languages and their eccentricities and divergence to be deeply fascinating. And while I could probably go on for pages upon pages with different examples, I am going to leave you with the one that started this whole article.

You see, apart from my quickly worded jayus (I don’t know if I used that correctly, and I can’t help but wonder if there is a plural form of this), there is another word I discovered that touches me on a deeply fundamental level. Tsundoku is the Japanese word that encompasses a difficult aspect of my life. This is my chosen art form: it is the act of buying books that pile up unread on your shelves. If this were a crime, I would be serving a life sentence.

It’s not that I don’t respect the books, no, that was never the issue for me. It is that my love for them goes so deep that I cannot say no when I see something that I want. Especially when it happens to be on sale. I have always had an obsession with books, even when I was a little kid- I owned more than I was able to cram into my overflowing bookshelf. They were stacked beside, on top of, and in front of one another (and this does not include the pile usually precariously placed beside my bed). As all small children do, I eventually grew up, and a glorious thing happened. I got a job. And with a job came money. What was a young enterprising eighteen year old woman to do after buying a few stylish work outfits? Run down to Borders (oh yes, how I miss this chain- I don’t know how they could have possibly gone out of business considering I might as well have set up my direct deposit to go straight to them). Obviously, this was before I grew up enough to have a mountain of bills to chip away at. But the love for the crisp paper and dark ink has never abated. Granted, it has expanded- with limited storage space and a frustration with mounds of clutter, I have evolved into an e-book carrier on top of my vast array in my actual bookshelf. It’s a good thing too- it is much easier to stay on my fiancé’s good side when my literary loves are only taking up space on my tablet as opposed to drowning him in even more cleverly placed bookshelves.

I am not even remotely ashamed of this love of mine, I display my books proudly, I keep my myriad of reading devices beside my bed or in my purse at all times. You will never find me without something to read within my reach. But there is a bit of a flaw in my plan. You see, I can buy these little paper lovelies much faster than I can actually read them. And when I see something that I like (especially on sale, oh, may the book gods have mercy on my soul if I walk into Barnes and Noble and see the clearance section, or, even worse- a special deal on my kindle. One-click shopping was the most ingenious evil that I have ever encountered). But when I see something that I like on sale- I can’t pass it up. I am physically unable to ignore the deal. Because there is a whole new world within those pages, and who am I to deny myself- nay, my craft- the opportunity to open my soul to a new creation? So I buy it. And then it sits on my shelf. And eventually I will read it, but you don’t know if it will be in a day or three years from now.

This has been an ever growing problem. One I attempted to remedy once upon a time. My piles were growing too large, so I told myself that I would have to read ten books for every one that I bought. This lasted about a week. And then I went I into ‘book debt.’ Promising myself that I would read them eventually to make up for what I bought. Eventually I gave up completely. I even went so far as to write down my entire ‘to-read’ list. Ironically, that file corrupted and I can’t look at it anymore. Probably a good thing because I know that my input is still vastly larger than my output.

So you see, I have discovered my soul in the language of another tongue. It’s beautiful, it’s prophetic, and it’s also reminding me to start working through that list I have. I will be brutally honest- if an asteroid hit the Earth tomorrow and I were trapped in an underground bunker for the next three years, I would still have enough to keep me occupied without begging to be released onto the unlivable surface to trek my way to the nearest library.

Writing Makes Me Whole

I write to express the things I cannot actually speak. I may have these eloquent, beautiful or equally witty and hilarious comments and quips all planned out in my head- but somewhere between my firing neurons, the message gets lost and comes out haphazard and jumbled. It’s frustrating really- to feel like I cannot portray on the outside who I really am inside. It’s like there’s this light shining through me, but instead of seeing myself in it, I just see shadows. I am an imposter in my own skin. Except when I write. That is when I truly feel most like myself. The awkwardness that envelopes the daily me is shed, or perhaps it’s just less noticeable when I’m not tripping over my syllables.

In my writing I can pretend to be a girl that enthralls me, a person who has had adventure thrust upon her and rises to the challenge. With my words I can be the strong, stubborn woman I have hidden inside of me. I don’t have to be the girl who fumbles for the correct thing to say and turns bright red when something unexpected is tossed in her lap. In life I am quiet and reserved; but when I write, I am bold and outgoing.

I have worn a thousand different masks in my life, I have been a hundred different incarnations of the same girl- all within the twenty-seven years I have spent on this earth. We all have- we are constantly changing, forever morphing into different versions of the person we were yesterday. I am a chameleon of sorts- blending in wherever I go, accentuating different aspects of my personality depending on who I am around. I’m not proud of it, but it is who I have been. But when I write- that is when I feel the most authentic. Sometimes I think my soul is written- it encompasses all of my being, it is the calm within the storm. My writing has carried me through every rough patch I have ever stumbled over. It is my constant, my rock.

I write because I don’t know how to stop, words run through my blood, pounding in my veins as I sleep, they flitter through the air that I breath. They are my comfort in a crazy world. I write to remember, and I write to forget. I write because I don’t know how else to show the world who I really am. This right here- this is me, in my truest form. I am not a girl, I am merely a collection of words strung together.