A Double Word Score
In the movie named after him, Forrest Gump says “Life is like a box of chocolates.” I’m wondering if it’s also like Scrabble. A life, a day, a month, a year is a Scrabble game and you make it up as you go and interact with what’s on the board and whatever is in your toolbox or quiver of arrows which is slowly being emptied. To each move you bring your own set of eyes and life experience leading you to perhaps see words that another might not, though some (or many) words would be seen by anyone. That first word perhaps represents what this journal is, right from Jump Street, first thing in the morning. Empty board, seven letters, what do you see?
I had a little book of trivia on Denali in 1986 and my climbing buddy Ralph and I would spend time asking each other questions. I’ll never forget how he said it’s like a review of your whole life
Maybe each morning is a review of your whole life. What you uniquely bring to it each time you reach for gratitude is like that opening gambit in Scrabble.
I set up the Scrabble board, drew seven letters. P, O, N, T, and three of the letter I. POINT was revealed immediately and I saw no way to use the two leftover I tiles. That reminded me of my years in scouting and learning Morse code and how the Boy Scout Handbook had ETAOINS as the most commonly used words in the English language, making I the fifth most. I’m not saying there is no way to use the leftovers, just that I don’t see it yet and haven’t done any research, which in Scrabble you’re not allowed to do anyway.
There is I POINT, which is also not allowed, and words subsumed like POT, TOP, IN, ON, PINT, TIN, NIP, PIN, NIT, ‘PON IT (like Shakespeare would have said), POI (which I learned is primarily the traditional staple food in native cuisine of Hawaii, made from the underground plant stem or corm of the taro plant), OPT, IN IT, NOT, TON, TO IT (I remember once being awarded a round TUIT for when I was ready to get around to it), IPO (for startups), TIP, ON IT, IN ON, PI (which makes me think of a book I love called The History of Pi), OPI (other than Ron Howard’s character in Andy of Mayberry which had an E at the end, the anagram can stand for offensive pass interference, office of public information, operator’s instructions, oremus pro invicem, which in Latin means let us pray for each other, oxygen percentage indicator and it looks like about at least fifty more possibilities).
I saw PITON (it took a while for that climbing tool to come into focus, which brought to mind a section of fixed ropes on Denali, already in place for climbers to use and anchored with pitons), saw TION and longed for another O for POTION or an S for piston and wondered if there’s a word PITION or IPTION (there aren’t, but it made me think of conniption, one of my grandmother’s words, as in so and so had a conniption) and how it would be nice to have another O for OPTION (because we love those, don’t we) or an E for INEPT (my kingdom for an E) or PETITION.
I looked at first and I thought damn, those aren’t very cool letters and then with a deeper look all those great connections and memories came into view. Just from seven ordinary letters. Daily gratitude sometimes involves looking a little deeper into the seemingly mundane and ordinary.
Anyone can love a rose, some anonymous person once said, but it takes a lot to love a leaf. It’s ordinary to love the beautiful, but it’s beautiful to love the ordinary.
