The Last Word On Nothing

I recently picked up a copy of John Koenig’s beautiful little book, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows and was pleasantly reminded of how satisfying it is to find a word for that thing that you’re feeling. Koenig’s book features dictionary entries of words he’s created to name human emotions, punctuated with short, thoughtful essays about the human condition. 

For instance:

idlewild
adj; feeling grateful to be stranded in a place where you can’t do much of anything — sitting for hours at an airport gate, the sleeper car of a train, or the backseat of a van on a long road trip–which temporarily alleviates the burden of being able to do anything at any time and trees up your brain to do whatever it wants to do, even if it’s just to flicker your eyes across the passing landscape.
-From Idlewild, the original name of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.

galagog
n. the state of being simultaneously entranced and unsettled by the vastness of the cosmos, which makes your deepest concerns feel laughably quaint, yet vanishingly rare.
-From galaxy, a gravitationally bound system of millions of stars +agog, awestruck. Pronounced “gal-uh-gawg.

pax latrina
n. the meditative atmosphere of being alone in a bathroom, sequestered inside your own little isolation booth, enjoying a moment backstage from the razzle-dazzle of public life.
-Latin pax, a period of peace + latrina, toilet. Compare Pax Romana of Pax Americana; sometimes the solace of bathroom stalls can feel just as profound as the protection of empires. Pronounced “paks luh-tree-nah

etherness
n. the wistful feeling of looking around a gathering of loved ones, all too aware that even though the room is filled with warmth and laughter now, it won’t always be this way–that the coming years will steadily break people away into their own families, or see them pass away one by one, until there comes a time when you’ll look back and try to imagine what it felt like to have everyone together in the same place.
-From ether, an intoxicating compound that evaporates very quickly + togetherness. Pronounced “eth-er-nis.”

I’ve had a difficult year, and that last one hit hard. With all the terrible things happening in the world of late, I’ve sometimes struggled to find hope, so I was buoyed by a word I discovered in Dahlia Lithwick’s recent Slate piece about the Uvalde shootings, “Why Politics Is Both the Poison and the Cure.”

Lithwick writes about “trying to reassemble” herself and find hope in the face of current events and being reminded that “In any march toward authoritarianism, fostering a broad sense of public hopelessness is very much the point.” 

Which is how she found herself searching for a way to express “the need for action and hope.” What she found was the Yiddish word tzebrokhnkayt meaning “the quality of broken-heartedness that gives strength in healing.” 

She goes on:

At its essence it means that “we each carry our shattered pieces with us.” The essential bit is that tzebrokhnkayt is not something in need of quick fixing; it is instead honored. It means that we are obligated to gather up, tend to and honor the pain, but also to take up the work of healing. …my friend Dahna turned the word into a prescription: “Let’s not be OK. Let’s find power in not being OK. Let’s honor our brokenness—and the brokenness of our country—by finding the collective strength to fight for change.”

Finding power in not being ok feels like exactly what we need in this moment. It’s a way of flipping hopelessness around, and turning despair into strength. I’m going to try it. Won’t you join me?

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-Original public domain image from Wikimedia Commons