Wow! My readership has gone down to about zero, as far as my stat counter shows anyway. Lol. A measure of my declining writing abilities, I guess. It's okay, I understand. These days I find myself very often using my phone to find synonyms in hopes that I will come upon the word I actually wanted, the one that was on the tip of my tongue yet relentlessly unavailable. The one that would have come to me readily a couple of years ago. Worse than forgetting individual words is forgetting what I wanted to say in the midst of the piece I am writing. As just now happened.
Sigh.
Have you ever noticed that the word "disease" is a whole lot worse than disorder. One might say, I have a disease of the central nervous system called multiple sclerosis", or he may say "I have a neurologic disorder which affects my central nervous system." The latter sounds so much better, don't you think. I mean, a disorder is one thing, a disease is quite another. And "No one," as the lyrics of the old West Side Story song go, "likes a fellow with a social disease". Or any other sort of disease.
Susan Sontag addresses this in her book, Illness as Metaphor. Disease, she suggests, is something that makes a person seem tainted, frightening, somehow unclean and unworthy. Disorder is something we all have, and sometimes even embrace. It makes us different rather than contaminated.
My name is Richard, and I have a neurologic disorder.
Well, you see how I lose the thread? What did I start out to say. Ah, yes, that my readership had plummeted.
No wonder.
Sigh.
Have you ever noticed that the word "disease" is a whole lot worse than disorder. One might say, I have a disease of the central nervous system called multiple sclerosis", or he may say "I have a neurologic disorder which affects my central nervous system." The latter sounds so much better, don't you think. I mean, a disorder is one thing, a disease is quite another. And "No one," as the lyrics of the old West Side Story song go, "likes a fellow with a social disease". Or any other sort of disease.
Susan Sontag addresses this in her book, Illness as Metaphor. Disease, she suggests, is something that makes a person seem tainted, frightening, somehow unclean and unworthy. Disorder is something we all have, and sometimes even embrace. It makes us different rather than contaminated.
My name is Richard, and I have a neurologic disorder.
Well, you see how I lose the thread? What did I start out to say. Ah, yes, that my readership had plummeted.
No wonder.
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