What caught my eye
An about section of someone on Facebook who spoke contrary to the way he looked, read:
His parents named him Abhishek but his homies call him #Abs!
| Delhi | NYC | Singapore |
S.W.A.G Life → choice of poison is Chivas #AspiringMillennial
Looking for a bae, who never says nay!
He’d be her Ranveer, if she’s a Deepika #couplegoals. Always available on snapchat, insta and FB. Remember, Abs is the man your mom warned you about.
First of all, I don’t think it’s cool anymore to talk about oneself in third person. Secondly, people should stop obsessing over the word “goals” and actually have some real goals.
How bad is ‘BAD’?
I can’t boast about my vocabulary or spellings, it’s terrible. But I would like to think of myself as a person who means what she says when she says it. I don’t know who would want to be remembered as the person who said things but didn’t really mean it! I had the sad misfortune of meeting people in college who couldn’t get past a single sentence without a single cuss word. What used to hurt my ears initially, slowly started sounding like a part of the vocabulary. There were (are) times I swore at someone in my head and felt bad about it. Anyways, I learnt that there will come a day when words would lose its true meaning and language might be reduced to incoherent sounds.
The New Low
Remember the days people used to send long emails and texts. Paragraphs of words and lesser acronyms. Then the emails got shorter. Instant messaging was trending followed by lesser words, then abbreviations and finally emojis. I was fine with it all. Then a new wave hit. People started coming up with new terms. Terms that described a not so relevant but a commonly seen instance. Not just things like #FOMO and #OOTD, but full-fledged words that were included in dictionaries. For example, when a guy really really wants to date that girl, but after a long string of uneventful encounters, she relegated him as a friend. Today this phenomenon is called being friend-zoned. A friend of mine speaks about the way in which the term is abused today, here. My favorite is skinny love which means two people who like each other but are too shy to express it.
New terms initially made me happy. It meant that we rediscovered what we lost out on and were not just getting back to using words, but upgrading it. I was like that guy who waited eagerly for the release of the new iPhone. But I was disappointed. Hundreds of words are added regularly on Urban Dictionary and most of them have something to do with love, dating or relationships. What came over the years were not just words that were pointless, but also something that encouraged everything that we should be standing up against.
I recently came across a word called Layby which refers to someone who is in a relationship but is seeking a way out. A person who is a “layby” isn’t comfortable being single so he/she would remain in their current relationship until they find another person to be in a relationship with. So while in their current relationship, a layby will start seeking for a new partner. So, in other words it means the person couldn’t gather enough courage to face reality and be open with their partner and chose the sneaky way out. Another one was Catch and Release which is a phrase used to describe the act where people enjoy the “chase” part of a relationship but walk away once the object of their desire has been “caught”.
They called it Upgrade
Okay, so I get the urge that writers (or whoever it is that are coining these new words) have to invent something new and come up with fresh content. I get it that these words arose from the need to bring to light everything that was going wrong with the way Gen Y dated or found love. Rather than making people aware to stay clear, the words attracted so much attention, that they became trends. If the word is cool, so is the act! The more someone heard, saw or thought of the term, the more people ended up doing it. Far far away from the effect we were going for. Ghosting, zombieing, cushioning, benching and many many others are just a few examples of the same.
But the bad guy wins
Can someone please explain why do the things we find irritating or the ones we hate actually end up going viral? Why aren’t there enough terms for things or moments that actually encourages love or something that helps a relationship bloom? Oh right, we millennials are allergic to anything that isn’t self destructive.
While we have no problems in having “fun” terms like ghosting and bread-crumbing for a phenomenon that should be shunned, we have long, boring and unheard words for things that are actually of importance, like ‘struggimento’ which refers to a combination of gut churning misery and yearning when you don’t get to see your loved one, one last time before they die. Or ‘mamihlapinatapai’ which defines the act of two people looking at each other each hoping the other will do what both desire but neither is willing to do. Not only are these words underappreciated, but also so hard to pronounce that they never become a wildfire. Of course, I can’t say, “Guys, I’m in limerence” (which means a state of mind that results from romantic attraction to another person) and expect people to understand and still manage to look cool! On the other hand, saying something like, “He breadcrumbed her” (which means periodically sending someone a flirtatious message, but not bothering to keep steady contact or ask them on a legitimate date) seems way more trendy!
My call for Equality
If everything negative that ever came out of dating has a word, then here’s my list of things that deserve a word too.
-The strange phenomenon by which the members of the opposite gender who usually don’t show even a hint of acknowledgment, suddenly take interest in you, the minute you become committed in a relationship
-The event where you fall asleep while talking or listening to someone over a late night phone or video call.
-That feeling when a song reminds you of someone you deeply love, and you’d wish that someday in reality or in a parallel universe they’d sing it for you (or vice versa).
-After a long day, you come home to that one person who gives you that one hug, that makes everything seem like a little less bothersome.
-The magical current that grips your body when your hands accidentally grazes the hands of your love.
-When you’re not with the person and you wonder what he/she is upto.
Because Love…
These are some among the many many things that, I think, deserve to be called something. Love isn’t only about who stood you up or the one that got away. What about the one that stayed or the one who is always by your side? Love is also about those butterflies when they look at you, those sparks when you watch them laugh or smile, the long walks you take while not saying anything, but saying everything and spending hours admiring them when they peacefully sleep. Love is that couple who grew old together but still hold hands and kiss before they say goodnight.
.
.
.
.
If you’re a writer or just someone who accidentally stumbled on this article and believes in love, then I urge you to join me in coming up with words for the examples I’ve mentioned. Words that actually mean something or that will matter. Help me promote love! Because as cliched as it may sound, love is something that has survived all these years and drives us to be better. If not, I beg you to stop anyone who, just for the sake of it, tries to come up with a new term for what honestly doesn’t need to be termed. There’s a lot of garbage in this world. A lot of which we don’t know what to do with. Lets not add to that.
