{"id":838,"date":"2005-04-10T00:07:57","date_gmt":"2005-04-10T08:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2005\/04\/10\/the-right-words\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:23:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:23:19","slug":"the-right-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2005\/04\/10\/the-right-words\/","title":{"rendered":"The Right Words"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Emotions, in my experience, aren&#8217;t covered by single words.  I don&#8217;t believe in &#8220;sadness,&#8221; &#8220;joy,&#8221; or &#8220;regret.&#8221;  Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling.  I&#8217;d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, &#8220;the happiness that attends disaster.&#8221;  Or:  &#8220;the disappointment of sleeping with one&#8217;s fantasy.&#8221;  I&#8217;d like to show how &#8220;intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members&#8221; connects with &#8220;the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.&#8221;  I&#8217;d like to have a word for &#8220;the sadness inspired by failing restaurants&#8221; as well as for &#8220;the excitment of getting a room with a minibar.&#8221;  I&#8217;ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I&#8217;ve entered my story, I need them more than ever.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Jeffrey Eugenides, <cite>Middlesex<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Emotions, in my experience, aren&#8217;t covered by single words. I don&#8217;t believe in &#8220;sadness,&#8221; &#8220;joy,&#8221; or &#8220;regret.&#8221; Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I&#8217;d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, &#8220;the happiness that attends disaster.&#8221; Or: &#8220;the disappointment of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,28,30,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-humanities","category-quotes","category-social-science"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=838"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10808,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions\/10808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}