It struck me as quite strange today that there were two words that sprang into my vocabulary out of, seemingly, nowhere that turned out to be much more ‘apt’ than anything that I could have used to replace them.\u00a0 What was even stranger was that these words were both adjectives, both used to describe “me” and almost entirely opposite in meaning!<\/p>\n
Is it possible to be disgruntled and sanguine at the same time – and about the same thing?\u00a0 It seems that is what I am!!\u00a0 At least if you believe everything I say.<\/p>\n
Within the space of a couple of hours I had described myself as “disgruntled” about a situation and then opined that I was “sanguine” about it.\u00a0 Was I right?<\/p>\n
If we look at synonyms for disgruntled we find (amongst others) : dissatisfied, discontented, aggrieved, resentful, fed up, displeased, unhappy, disappointed, disaffect.\u00a0 Thinking about the situation that triggered these thoughts all of these synonyms carry at least some of the feeling I have about it.<\/p>\n
Turning to sanguine we find (again amongst others) : optimistic, bullish, hopeful, buoyant, positive, disposed to look on the bright side, confident, cheerful, cheery, bright, assured.\u00a0 OK – so one or two of those are not appropriate – I would discount being cheerful, cheery or bright – but the others are accurate.<\/p>\n
I think – as usual with paradoxes – and I have some thoughts about paradoxical situations that I will share at some point – the solution is that the situation must be looked at from a different perspective in order to resolve the paradox.<\/p>\n
I am – indeed – very disgruntled with the fact the situation exists, however my sanguinity comes from a confidence that it will be resolved satisfactorily.\u00a0 So I do think it possible to hold these two conflicting emotions simultaneously – perhaps there are lessons there with regard to other seemingly conflicting emotions.\u00a0 Perhaps we too easily dismiss the possibility of opposites and contradictions existing side by side.<\/p>\n
In the meantime – I am pretty sure that I prefer to be sanguine rather than disgruntled….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It struck me as quite strange today that there were two words that sprang into my vocabulary out of, seemingly, nowhere that turned out to be much more ‘apt’ than anything that I could have used to replace them.\u00a0 What was even stranger was that these words were both adjectives, both used to describe “me” … Continue reading “Words Of The Day”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[96,103,119],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ignorance","tag-learning","tag-philosophical","tag-worldview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":411,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions\/411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}