Monday, May 12, 2014

What If?


One great thing about convalescence is that I have plenty of time to read and think. Sometimes this leads to a mental break-through, a putting-things-together moment, a flash of insight.


It started when my pal Linda sent me a link to “Grammar, Identity, and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive.”* Watching this TEDx video got me thinking about the difference between optimist and pessimism.

The subjunctive is used to express unreality in its various forms ­ our wishes, hopes, judgments, and much more. It expresses our “if only” and our “what if?” If only often looks to the past: “If only I hadn’t developed rheumatoid arthritis, I would be a different woman today.”  That’s the dark side of the subjunctive. What if, on the other hand, often ponders questions about the future, such as“Would strawberries thrive if we planted them in the stock tank?”

Trying to envision life without rheumatoid arthritis would be not only nonproductive, but also embittering, and I refuse to go there. I’m sticking with reality and possibilities, such as picking strawberries without bending to the ground.

In the meantime, my hip is healing well and I’m getting better every day. So, if your hip is worn out and causing misery, what if you get a hip replacement? It is much easier than you may fear.

*Sorry, I can't seem to create a viable link to this presentation, but it's easy to find on YouTube.

1 comment:

Blair said...

Hi Shirley! I liked your post and your choice to stay on the optimistic-side of the subjunctive! You know what? The subject of your post reminded me of some linguistic-anthropological studies that I've been fascinated in learning more about. In learning the subjunctive tense in Spanish, for example, you come to find that other cultures/language groups find more situations "questionable" than we do in English.

For example, in English, I'd say "When you come home, we'll go to the grocery store." But in Spanish this same phrase requires the subjunctive tense because, as my Spanish teacher says, "you never know if he's going to come home!" I have found this to be true more in Spanish than even in French or Italian, where the subjunctive tense is pervasive. Isn't that funny? My theory, then, is that the Spanish-speaking regions have a better sense of the uncertainty of the future than, say, we do here speaking English. Food for thought!