Move Along...Please!

 

Miranda Wu,photographer 

I so dislike the term "move on". It needs an early retirement.  I am only saying out loud what some others are thinking, but won't say anything because they have er, ah, ahem "moved on? 

Moving on is a myth; unalterable things do indeed change us; we find ways to work with it around it or through it. We function more or less as well as we can with the things that are thrown at us. 

We may regroup, we may restructure, we may even generate a new life! But I so get weary of hearing the phrase move on with usually is preceded with "get over". It is in my Top Ten words are phrases that truly needs to be gotten over! 

I mean what is that we really have to "get" to "move"? 

I GET move on because we got the beat, I GET we should shake our groove thing to move to better health (and because it is pure fun), I even GET why some folks like Lady Gaga 

 

or Justin Beiber! 

 

But why are we in such a rush when something happens to move on? 

True, there are some things that honestly way too many people spend way too much time agonizing over something that really at the end of the day doesn't have anything to do with the price of tea in China. However now we have swung far too much to the other end of the pendulum with that phrase using it so indiscriminately now that people tossing it around so casually as if worrying about well lets say oh almost everything until it is beaten into being almost unrecognizable submission. 

And then what? 

Oh yes then we have to take "the journey". Never thought life was a journey. 

 

Mark Gilbreath,photographer 

I thought it was. uh, living! 

Truly I am not putting anyone down, so please do not think I am criticizing the reader if you do indeed use these phrases. 

My annoyance is in sometimes in the U.S. with people thinking "moving on" is some laudable point & by simply uttering the words, though more like hurtling them at someone, that they all of a sudden become enlighten the issue is gone and life is great!  Life is great even when there is the challenge or a temporary glitch! 


There is no shame or less virtue if someone gives some honor or dignity to the suffering or the sometimes painful work that one is dealing with .  There's a distinct difference in that and wallowing in the vomit, so to speak. 


 No one, absolutely no one can decide for the person when/ how/ why they should go from deal with it (facing the issue)  to dealing with it  (working on it) or have dealt with it (now finished). 


I submit, having a sneaky suspicion, that usually the one saying that to someone's plight whether real or imagined, is more about THEIR inability to perhaps cope (well) with whatever may be bugging THEM.  We've come up with really weird ways of feeling enpwered, more & more of using tactics to disempower others so we get a self-satisfied smugness by saying "Oh we're not like them".


Yes, someone could say that is what I am doing, but so you know...


I'm dealing with it!

I am saying can we find something else another word another phrase or something? 

There are big ole dictionaries, thesaurus and the Internet where there is a wealth of words to use! I think when we reduce things to a few catch phrase, it diminishes the speaker & the hearer as if "perhaps we are to busy to really care much so let me just toss this out and that should be enough for the moment because I simply do not have the time or want to be bothered". Or have we've become such a microwaved society that we have rushed headlong into the "culture of busyness" to feel important or to drown out what is really happening? 

And while we are rushing do we really accomplish much. Oh yes that's right we have to we must Multi-task as if that is a requirement or even worse a virtue and if you can't or won't something is wrong with YOU! 

We talk at each other, we've reduce words down to "wl C U 2morrow tnx " with now a whole generation cannot spell any longer and depend far too much on spell check... Or now we have to use Wiii so our children can get some exercise because they have lost the ability to move on... 

Make no mistake I am not saying we need the good old days, because if the truth be told the good old days weren't all that good. We see it through the scrim of time & nostalgia & selective memories but then again, I guess I can say that because... 

I've moved on...