Ever accidentally mispronounce a word?  I imagine we all have.  My son, Thomas, when he was quite young, mentioned taking a pet to the “aminal hobbisal,” and “hobbisal” has remained in our family’s vocabulary ever since.

Tommy did it again last Friday during family game night.  We were playing Apples to Apples and in the excitement of the moment he mispronounced “philosophical” as “philoso-fickle” with a strong accent on the first syllable of “fickle.”  It was an honest mistake, but we couldn’t help but burst into laughter.  Tommy was a good sport, laughed too.

It’s a wonder, though, that “philosofickle” isn’t already in use.  It obviously means someone who is fickle in implementing his avowed philosophy – someone who “talks the talk” but doesn’t “walk the walk.”

The Supreme Court is currently deciding if lying is protected under the First Amendment.  The case itself involves lying about military honors, but the court – ever mindful of political realities – appears concerned that if lying about one’s military service can be criminalized, lying in politics can be too.

Politicians, of course, never lie – just ask them!  But most politicians realize that to be effective one has to be philosofickle now and again.

Take president Obama.  He’s managed to alienate a large portion of his own party by not closing Gitmo, not going far enough with healthcare reform, extending the Bush-era tax cuts, and seeking compromise with uncompromising Republicans in Congress.  All these actions seem philosofickle to many on the Left.

Most recently Obama’s “philosofickle-ness” has gotten him in trouble with both the Left and the Right.  After initially requiring religiously-affiliated organizations to pay for women’s contraceptives in their health insurance plans, he bowed to religious pressure and let them opt out.  To those on the Left this is allowing organized religion to use government to impose its particular brand of morality on others.  Those on the Right, though, are still up in arms that the government could even consider interfering in church affairs (even though conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has written that the court has never exempted anyone from obeying “an otherwise valid law” because of their religious beliefs).

Philosofickleness is very much a mainstay of politics.  One of the cornerstones of Republicanism, for example, is limiting the reach of government.  Yet Republicans inVirginia recently tried to force women seeking legal abortions to undergo a physically invasive ultrasound procedure.  An avalanche of public outrage doomed the bill, but it’s a perfect example of philosofickleness when those wanting less intrusive government also want government to physically intrude into women’s bodies.

Republicans, though, appear to be trying hard to avoid philosofickleness, deliberately forgetting in the process that compromise is sometimes the only way government can function.  The ideological reluctance of the Tea Partiers to raise the debt ceiling in August – which caused a downgrade ofAmerica’s credit rating – is a good example of how avoiding philosofickleness can harm the nation.  For though a good compromise may leave both sides unhappy, refusal to compromise can cause real harm.

It’s a shame that one must be philosofickle to succeed in politics, but that’s the nature of the beast.  Not that being principled is wrong, but one must not let the perfect become the enemy of the possible.  And maybe, if we as a people could be honest enough to admit that compromise is necessary where differing ideologies must coexist, we could begin to reduce the partisan intransigence that is slowly but surely strangling our nation.

I read recently that scientists studying the evolution of language have concluded that over time, languages become simpler, explaining perhaps why the works of Shakespeare can be a little confusing today.  Linguists also believe that originally human speech included not just the consonant and vowel sounds we are familiar with, but many other vocal sounds, including a variety of clicks, as the Bushmen of Africa still use.

One need only try to decipher a typical text message to realize that our written language is currently undergoing a dramatic simplification.  Whether or not this remains confined to cell phones has yet to be seen.  But I suspect it will spread.

But it isn’t just technology that is transforming our language.  Time, as the researchers have revealed, has always been doing this.  Yet until the advent of texting, it has done so slowly enough that we rarely notice.

A few years ago my mother gave me a book entitled Endangered Words by Simon Hertnon, which contains a number of words that aren’t used much anymore.  I’ve hardly encountered any of them before.  They include elozable, “amenable to flattery;”  perspicacious, “of acute mental vision or discernment;” schlimmbesserung, “a so-called improvement that makes things worse;” perendinate, ‘to defer until later;’ and agathism, “the doctrine that all things tend towards the ultimate good, as distinguished from optimism which holds that all things are now for the best.”  An agathistic person ‘believes things can be improved by taking action.’

This last definition calls to mind last week’s comments by the perspicacious editor of this newspaper, Jim Dickerson (who I hope is elozable), when he asked if we are ‘optimistic, pessimistic, or somewhere in between’ when it comes to the future of this area.  Specifically, he wondered if we’re optimistic enough to proceed with new housing and a new school.

I agree that whatever is decided will be a barometer of whether we as a community are optimistic and see it growing, pessimistic and see it declining, or agathistic – understanding that we face challenges but believing we have it within our power to make things better.

Nearly 30 years ago when I was trying to decide if I should start a recording studio, a friend observed that “while a positive attitude doesn’t guarantee success, a negative attitude does guarantee failure.”  In other words, unless I was optimistic about my prospects, I shouldn’t move forward because my pessimism would lead to bad decisions.  But he was realistic enough to know that optimism alone isn’t enough to ensure success – even with hard work, some endeavors fail.

I did move forward with music and continue to experience both failure and success.  Both have arisen from my agathism – my belief that if I work harder I can do better.  But my friend was right — I have never succeeded at anything I didn’t bother to attempt because I was too pessimistic about the prospects of success.  Who knows what might have happened in those instances if I’d been more positive? 

The stakes involved with expanding our housing and our school are high – no one wants an expensive schlimmbesserung!  But it’s important to consider more than just cost – we are, after all, setting our community’s course for the future.  And while tough decisions can lead us to being perendinate, we can’t afford to become velleitous (wanting things to be better without doing anything to bring about improvements).  After all, one need only text with a teenager to see what being velleitous is doing to our language.