Syntheton

Syntheton (sin’-the-ton): When by convention two words are joined by a conjunction for emphasis.

Death and taxes, life’s two certainties. But who cares? I specialize in uncertainty, experiencing it and cultivating it. I revel in anxiety—mine and yours. I am a “Worry Wart.” I help free people from the trap of certitude—that bleak unchanging mental place, where you’re stuck in the grip of truth—always, everywhere the same. Blah, blah, blah.

Certainty is like a lump of coal in your stocking on Christmas morning. Santa pulls no punches, so you know you’re naughty. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. That’s it. No room for improvement. No chance for redemption. You think “naughty” is the truth, but it isn’t. A Worry Wart can encompass this “truth” growing over it and masking its effect—it can throb with questions pounding away at the “truth.” What if Santa didn’t put the lump of coal in your stocking? What if Santa put the lump of coal in your stocking by mistake? What if there is no such thing as Santa? Good God!

There is this sweet anxiety prompted by the questions above. You worry. The space between the questions prompts anxiety as you wonder about the accuracy of the naughty-imputation signified by the lump of coal. Where should you turn? What should you believe? The foundation of your self concept has been shaken. The “truth” of the coal’s “naughty” projection has been shattered into shards, which, at best, now construe the possible. But the shards would have to be put back together again. It is uncomfortable. It is disconcerting. It is probably impossible.

Now, you try being nice. It is a choice. “Nice” takes a sort of competence imbued by practice. But you realize that being naughty works the same way. You must desire to be nice. You must desire to be naughty. And what is more disconcerting—you can be naughty and nice. Not at the same time, though. Now you are really provoked! Where does the “wanting” come from? The same place everything else comes from.

Human nature! The womb of human nurture: the social matrix that gives birth to character and cultivates its changes prompted by experience caught in worry, flowing inexorably toward the unknowable future.

POSTSCRIPT

Worry Wart has done it again! Functional anxiety will set you free.

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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