I think the most interesting thing about the whole health month experience, though, isn’t playing the game and following the rules but a small rhetorical thing that seems to be true. We talk about “being healthy” like its a state. I can say, “My goal is to be healthy” and there is this sense that what I mean is I want to have (and maintain) this thing called “healthy”. But, I think this is the wrong way to look at it. I think treating it this way, as if it is a place I can go or something I can have misses the point. Healthiness is a series of actions that are meant to maintain a certain state. In effect, you have to “do healthy” in order to “be healthy”. And, while this to might be completely obvious, I find it a little game-changing. The thought that health isn’t an endpoint but a process that must consistently be engaged in is both empowering and comforting.

I enjoy knitting socks. Even when the pattern is complicated, if you focus you can knock a pair out in a day or so.  And, then you have hand made socks.  I’ve heard tell that the Prince of Wales only wears a pair of socks once, because there is nothing like the feel of a fresh pair of socks.  While I don’t disagree, wearing a pair of socks for the first time is wonderful, I’d have to say that wearing a pair of hand-knit socks, whether its the first time or not, is even better.

This morning, while I was bundling up to go out and brave the cold and the snow I thought to myself, “Getting all bundled up like Nanook of the North.” And then I thought, “huh, wonder where that came from?” Now, in the Kateolect, I know exactly where it came from: My Mom used to say it when we were little and we had to put on our snow pants and coats before we went out to play. But, that isn’t interesting. what is interesting is that Nanook of the North is the title of the first feature-length documentary film. It was made in 1922 and is a silent film about Inuk man living in the Arctic circle in Canada. Apparently, some of the sequences may have been staged by the director, but even so it was one of the first twenty-five films to be added to the National Film Registry.

And, potentially also interesting is the fact that my Mom probably got it from her Mom, not being a big silent movie buff. It was fun, sometimes, to chase down where these expressions come from and speculate about how they came into and then why they stayed in the language.

Amazing!

And, then one of them said that she was reading a book for fun and came across it. She was pleased that she knew what it meant. And, I am pleased that I’m a nerd who likes words and that I was able to share it with her. It is a little thing, I know, but sometimes little things make you smile.