This winter I have been most entertained by the official state bird of Florida: the mockingbird.
Florida designated the mockingbird as the official state bird in 1927, and the northern mockingbird is also the state bird of Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi.
The first memory I have of mockingbird comes from an encounter at our daughter’s home in Tennessee. I was astounded that so many birds would be up singing during the middle of the night!
It was just one bird, the mockingbird, with extraordinary vocal abilities. They can sing up to 200 songs, including the songs of other birds, insect and amphibian sounds and even an occasional mechanical noise, such as a car alarm.
I recently heard “pretty bird” come off the beak of a mockingbird! I am very sorry we do not get to enjoy mockingbirds in Michigan.
Mockingbird sounds are odd, but human words are even more odd. Those who have studied SCS/NLP with Joel and me have a lot of experience with odd (made-up) words. SCS is a made-up word, short for Subtle Communication Systems (another made-up word). Even NLP, and neuro-linguistic-programming are both made-up words, too.
Rumor has it that Richard Bandler was stopped for speeding (while under the influence of substance). In spite of acting out that risky behavior, Richard is S-M-A-R-T. He knew if he answered the officer’s “What do you do?” with the truth (I am a student who does drugs and plays music in a rock band), he would likely end up arrested. He supposedly looked at the books on the seat (things he was studying at the time) and said, “I am a neurolinguistic programmer.”
The rest is history.
EVERY word is made-up.
Some words have pretty clear origins. Both in Spanish and Portuguese (as well as in the Italian felicità), the words for happiness have a root in the Latin word ‘felix’ which could also mean ‘fertile.’
I am purr-fectly curious now about how Felix the cat got his name….
Noun simply means name. Nouns are naming words.
In NLP, the made-up word nominalization is a verb describing the process of using a verb or adjective as a noun.
An easy way to identify a noun is to answer the question, “Could this be put into a wheelbarrow?” An actual noun names a tangible object, that could be placed into a wheelbarrow, even if it might take a REALLY BIG wheelbarrow to hold it.
You might be wondering why this is relevant to you, to anyone, to everyone.
People fight, argue, disagree — and sometimes kill — over nominalizations: peace, freedom, kindness, love; right, wrong, good, bad. How about saved, salvation, repentance, forgiveness? Selfish, illegal, true, false? The list of nominalizations being accepted as nouns is essentially endless.
The next time you notice yourself reacting to something you hear or read, be sure to notice also the nominalizations. The old saying goes something like this, “Sticks and stones may break bones, but words can never hurt me.”
Unnoticed nominalizations hurt everybody all the time…
We can all take our lessons from the mockingbird and sing a song of happiness.
We can use our heads, for goodness sake!
