Watchwords

Maybe I’m dating myself by using that title to my post. Should I say “catch phrase”? Probably “hashtag”. But to be honest, I don’t use the word “hashtag”…unless I’m being sarcastic.

 

Watchwords, catch phrases, hashtags…they are those one or two word thoughts whose intention is to bring to the listener’s mind an immediate idea. Most of the time the current generation brings them into being. And, 90% of the time, they disappear within a very short period of time, lost to the newest idea being pushed. I mean, really, who remembers #MeToo? That was so #BLM ago.

 

But sometimes a watchword hangs around for a little longer than a few months. Until it becomes so overused it lacks any form of real meaning. I’ve been reminded of a couple of them lately.

 

A couple of Emry and Ethan’s little friends took them sledding a week ago. As 2, 3, 4 and 5-year-olds will do, one of them said something silly, they all thought it ridiculously funny, and now I hear it nearly every day. 

 

“It’s belly button day!” Emry sang one morning, a refrain I was to hear over-and-over again within the next 24 hours. 

 

“What?” Ed asked when he got up later that morning. 

 

“Belly button day!” Ethan shouted gleefully.

 

“Didn’t you know?” I told Ed. “It’s a very inclusive holiday. Every soul on earth is included.”

 

Ed started laughing. And, of course, I meant it very sarcastically for “inclusive” has become one of those watchwords so overused it means nothing and accomplishes the very opposite of it’s intent. Have you noticed that? It just seems like the more inclusive we become, the more exclusive we actually are. Where’s the “S” in LBGTQ for “straight”? And yet they claim into be inclusive…as long as that means we include them while they exclude us.

 

The other word that has been hanging around for a while is “sustainable”. In my line of business (landscape architecture, community planning, etc.), it’s a word I see over a dozen times every day. Nearly everything I write up includes the word sustainable. Because everything we do should be sustainable.And every product we buy should be made from sustainable material. Even though the laptop I’m typing it up on probably won’t last another two years. A community plan is typically revised every ten years. Even the best landscape maintenance plan fails in a drought. Paper that gets printed wrong gets tossed out whether it was sustainably made or not. And windmills cause millions in Texas to loose power. I see that word so often, I skim over it almost as quickly as “the” and “and”. It’s nearly laughable.

 

Now, don’t mistake my sarcasm. I don’t sit around teaching my children to exclude other kids on the playground because of the color of their skin, hair, or shirt. Unless the kid they want to play with is a bully or doing something they shouldn’t, I don’t mind who they play with. And I actively teach my kids that our yard should be neat and trim, their toys should be treated well so they will last, and they should take care of the creatures God created. But not because any of that is “sustainable”. It isn’t, but we’re called to be good stewards of it all the same.

 

Ten years from now, who knows what we’ll be hashtagging. Probably nothing since “hashtag” will be a thing we old people did when cell phones had “apps”. Inclusivity will give way to I shutter to think and we’ll have to rethink sustainable when Miami drops off the face of the earth and sinks into the ocean. (Not a serious loss, by the way.) So let’s just remember that watchwords come and go. The Word remains the same: yesterday, today, and forever.