The other night my husband and I watched an episode of Modern Family called “Unplugged.” Like the title implies, the storyline followed one family’s challenges to unplug from all electronic devices for a week. It wasn’t very successful. I could relate. I’ve become so addicted to checking email that I can’t even stop at a red light without pulling out my phone to see if anything has arrived in the fifteen minutes since I last checked.

Which is why I relish the hikes my husband, Edwin, and I take each week, living as we do near Acadia National Park and lots of coastline and woods. Away from my computer, I notice the world, move my body, marvel at the beauty surrounding me, and, fairly often, wind up having somewhat odd, and frequently silly exchanges with Edwin. We’ve created our aphorism riddles (see examples here, here, here & here) and Edwin has made up some pretty clever jokes.

During our last venture up a mountain in Acadia Edwin, who loves words, thought it would be interesting to come up with a sentence using words with the ending “iginous.” There aren’t many of them, so you can imagine our dismay when we found out that “litiginous” isn’t actually a word, even though people say it a lot.

Here’s the sentence we came up with:

Vertiginous Virgil vanished from the serpiginous sluiceway on the caliginous coast leaving his lover, litigious Lucy, sobbing and ready to sue.

Now, some might think this isn’t the best use of time. Perhaps we ought to be discussing ways to imbue curricula with humane education and create solutionary teams in schools, but on my breaks from work, it feels just right to play word games and laugh at our strange verbal creations. At least we’re not reading Facebook pages or incessantly checking email.

Zoe Weil, author of Most Good, Least Harm

Image courtesy of gsilva.

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Filed under: creativity, Inner Peace, mindfulness, MOGO (Most Good) | Tagged: aphorisms, consumerism, creativity, electronics, leisure, mindfulness, recreation, restoration, riddles, television, time, wordplay | Comments Off