I was talking to someone the other day and I said "you know I am really just resigned about my life right now." Their response: "That is awful you feel so hopeless." And I was confused.
I don't feel hopeless. I feel resigned. I feel like I do when I sit down at a Texas Hold 'Em poker game and the cards are dealt and the first round of betting has just begun. You have time to take a peak at your cards and you have to make a decision. Before the flop, before all the bets are down. Do you fold? Or do you play?
I am choosing to play. And that is what I mean by resigned. I am here. Sitting at the table with my two cards. I have made my bet. Now I have to wait and see how the hand plays out - knowing that along the way there will be crucial decisions that I will need to make to keep myself alive in the game. Resigned.
Merriam Webster defines it as: "to give oneself over without resistance." You will notice that definition, like the one I use, does not apply a positive or negative emotion to the word.
When I was teaching last year in New Orleans I focused a lot of time with my kids on the difference between the denotative definitions of words (how the dictionary defines them) and the connotative definitions of words (how we react to them or feel about them). The word resigned, like the word failure are both good examples where the denotative definition has long been lost to the connotative one. Perhaps it is time for new words...
