A rose isn’t always a rose: We program ourselves to be more positive

Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt is a poetry and prose writer who has lived in Prince William County since 1999. She has published six books and is working on a seventh. Learn more about her at KatherineGotthardt.com, and follow her work on Facebook by searching #KatherinesCoffeehouse.

By Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt

Ever read Romeo and Juliet? In a famous dialogue that people misquote all the time, Juliet says of and to Romeo:

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

That’s lovely, Juliet, but really. You’re the Elizabethan emo kid who offed yourself for a boy-man. Should we really be building a philosophy around you?

I say that only half kidding. Let’s take a closer look at what we had to read in high school.

It’s changed a lot since I was a kid, of course. We read Steinbeck and Hemingway and Plath, “The Great Gatsby” and “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.” Everyone dies or kills themselves either in the stories or real life.

Kids tell me it’s not so different now, in terms of what they have to read in high school. I came out of high school thinking I couldn’t write unless I was depressed.

Think about this. You’re young and hormonal. You’re dealing with everything teens have to deal with just growing up. Then you are told to immerse yourself in horrors that are beyond most adults’ ability to cope with—usually without much context or support.

Now before anyone gets the idea I’m a book burner, anti-education, anti-reality, or anti-anything, stop. Just stop. That’s not where I’m going with this. Where I’m going is here:

Words matter.

See, Juliet thinks a rose is a rose is a rose. The fact is, if you called a rose a turd, it would take on a totally different connotation.

Before long, it would even stop smelling sweet, because words have the power to shape ideas. Words can spur emotion and action. Your mind largely believes what you tell it to, and we largely use words, even if we’re not saying them out loud.

This doesn’t mean we stop reading the hard stuff. It means we give it context. And we offset it with words that are empowering, motivating and inspiring.

We feed our brains something other than gloom and doom and we repeat those words in our head. We program ourselves to be more positive.

You can attribute this phenomenon to psychology, neurology, linguistics, neurolinguistics—you can study it any way you want. Brain sciences confirm you have to be careful what words you put into your brain and when.

If you want to be inspired and motivated, read things that are inspiring and motivating. Let the letters and words seep into your brain. Read them out loud if you want. Or read silently, moving your lips. Listen to the voice in your head. Let the voice read LOUDLY so you can hear the words.

Oh Juliet, I’m sorry—
you got it wrong.
A rose is a rose
because we call it so.
Call it thunder,
and we hear the storm.
Call it onion soup,
and we smell the pungent kitchen.
Call it the edge of a knife
and we feel it touch the softness
of our skin.
Feel how it pricks the forearm,
drawing blood?
That’s mortality leaking out.
Put your sword away.
Stand down.
This is my day.
You don’t belong here.

Until next time,

Katherine