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:
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!
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