Author: C.Lawrence
We feel that change is all around us and there are days that we feel that it is impossible to keep up. We think and mutter to ourselves, “stop the world I want to get off”.
We struggle to hold ourselves together, embracing techniques like yoga, meditation, breathing exercises, good diets, physical exercise and on and on. We also hold ourselves together in destructive ways, too much to drink, too much to eat or just retreating from the world. We believe coping day to day is our personal problem.
Let’s take the most simple three letter word HOT. Just the formation of the word HOT makes you feel: H – half-open mouth, half breath, O – pause in open mouth and T- quick close of mouth with tongue into play. All this movement for one little word!
We all realize the conventional meaning of HOT as related to temperature of our surroundings or hot to our touch. However, the word HOT can take on a myriad of other meanings as we speak it. (American Sign Language cannot have that flexibility as a visual language where signs have to denote a specific concept.) Nevertheless, I deviate as I want to show the complexity and change we deal with just with the word HOT.
Hot can be a noun, an adjective, used in a colloquial sense as a single word or as part of a phrase. Here are some samples:
- Hot Shot – good at something in particular
- hot shot – a super shot at goal in hockey
- hot topic – discuss something that is popular or controversial
- hot – she/he/they that is considered attractive or sexy
- hot – can imply timelines, e.g. hot food (short as it cools quickly) or hot as in dessert with longer timelines
- hot object – stolen goods
- hot –spicy
- hot potato – a warning not to go near or touch something
- hot pot – denotes exotic foreign food Mongolian etc.
- hot – latest in thing, popular
- hot as hell – flames our imagination
Hot can be part of film, art and music where context creates the meaning or leaves interpretation open to the audience. Phrases such as “hot time in the ol’ town tonight” (song) or “some like it hot” (film).
To my point, a simple three-letter word can be literal or figurative. It can affect how we feel, what we eat, how we react, and how our imagination works. Our absorption and understanding comes from being part of our culture.
In conclusion, when the world is “too much with you” relax and know that eventually without any extreme effort on your part, you will eventually absorb enough to get by in this ever-changing place.
Just think and reflect on this ‘HOT LESSON’.