And the Buzzword Is . . .

[sharonsays]

 This will come as a shock to those who know that my least favorite buzzword is "actionable." I first encountered this gem while working as a temp secretary for Harvard Community Health Plan. Knowing they couldn't possibly want to do something actionable, I changed the term to "feasible" and was taken to task by the office harridan. Three years of

Comments

[hilleviw]

Not just a personalized copy of the top ten laws...an engraved copy.

Utterly agree with your gist. The moment someone starts talking about "our journey" I brace myself for hackneyed metaphor.

Watching the Olympics I was especially amused to hear about the "long journey" some 16 year old kid had taken. Each time I'd be muttering in my head "you'd better be talking about Baby's plane trip to Canada."

[sharonsays]

A wonderful emendation. I made a few edits above and did change personalized to engraved. As for the Olympics, a long journey is one you undertake of necessity, traversing continents to escape pogroms. Otherwise, it's just air travel.

[going_not_gone]

Most of us, I daresay, take the same "journey" as the Israelites: spending years wandering in circles and making very little progress.

[sharonsays]

True enough. We probably hear the word "journey" most when we're asking for directions.

Still, there's the question of how you define progress. What did your precocious daughter say of the Iliad, "Achilles has been whining for 400 pages now and needs to get over himself"?

On the other hand, there's the phenomenal poet Hannah Senesh. She made a successful escape from Nazi Germany then died in a concentration camp. In the interim, though, she became a paratrooper and voluntarily reentered Germany to help others escape. Maybe not a huge distance from where she started but a terrific and inspiring journey.

Seekers

[anonymous]

My church -- christian congregational -- avoids the word by describing most of the congregation as "seekers". It's not hard to find families that exhibit precisely the behaviors listed above, like the wandering Jews in the desert, at family gatherings. A lot of their behavior is surely "actionable"?

Re: Seekers

[sharonsays]

Love the reply but I'm afraid that family dynamics are generally not "actionable." Surely regrettable, undoubtedly in poor taste but, even if it comes to blows, probably not a lawsuit. The tort concept "assumption of the risk" would probably apply, i.e., you knew what you were getting into and chose to attend. Blame that on English Common Law.

I like Seekers but think it probably works best with Christians or anyone else who lacks the arrogance to have the one and only answer from on High. Whether it's how to set the table or whether to add more salt, I'm afraid that many Jews think they DO have the answer -- if only every one else would see it that way. Again, regrettable but not without lots of precedent.

By the bye, I don't object to the term "journey" when it applies, only to those who pepper their speech with the term until it loses any meaning. As with all "buzzwords" less is more.