A Rose or Flower by Any Other Name

What is in a name?  Maybe you even know the meaning of your first name.  My first name is of Scottish decent & means, “Peace maker.”  If you have not had the opportunity to find out what your first name means, it may be pretty cool to look it up on-line & see if you think your name “fits” you or not.  Then you may find yourself proceeding on to look up family members’ name origins as well.  It is kind of a fun exercise to see if the name & meaning match up or not.  Within our nuclear family, all 5 of our names are spot on.

From my earliest memory, my heart’s hope is that conflict be minimized & peace maximized.  This is an understatement.  My natural tendency was to try to resolve unrest in any setting even as a young gal.  If each of us carry various mottos that we live by throughout different phases of our lives, my motto growing up was, “can’t we all just get along.”  It seemed like the natural & easy thing to do.  That is a child’s view of the world.  Perhaps, it is the adult world that complicates the simple somehow.  For sure, it is more complex than that yet there is some basis in changing the world for the better within the heart set of simplicity & the guidepost of “doing the next right thing.”  Please know that I am not suggesting that I did not get into many arguments myself as a youth.  It is always easier to examine under a microscope others’ actions & motives & behaviours versus our own.  Learning & choosing to hold ourselves accountable to the same scale as we hold others is one that comes with maturity in most cases.  Not too surprising, my natural tendencies lead me to pursue a career in counseling which is my heart’s passion to this day.  If we extend the saying, “you can take the girl out of the small town but not the small town out of the girl”, as well to “you can take the person away from counseling for brief periods yet you cannot take the counseling out of the person.  I love cognitive behavioural therapy because literally we can each employ this method as a wee bit of a resource.  This is really the basis of my mindset & that is that we each have free will & therefore have choice over what we allow to linger within our minds.  We can choose & influence the population of thoughts that go through our minds in a given day.  Just because a thought comes to mind does not mean that it is correct or fits.  Let’s say that a traffic light was not working.  What do we do?  We obey the traffic laws, right.  Why?  The reason is that we have discernment or the ability to know the difference between what is right (behaviourally) & wrong (incorrect behavior).  Over the years, I have retained that peace maker’s heart yet developed a couple of decades ago, the experience & knowledge to know that a world free of strife is a tall order.  Now, rather, I concentrate on the breath taking positive changes/differences that can come out of resolved conflict or conversions of mind & heart.

My husband’s name means “warrier.”  You will not hear anyone that knows him challenge that name meaning.  He is a man of character, the most self-assured person that I know & he bases all of his actions on his principles.  Folks that have not seen his gentle heart are intimidated by him.  Isn’t it amazing in life when you meet someone & you get a certain impression say that this is a dominant, unapproachable person to later learn through sharing additional time together that this is a stand-up, go-to person that has the heart of a treasured friend.  That is a little hidden treasure.

For our sons, our oldest son’s name means “gift”, second son: “ virtuous & person of strength” & youngest,” peace maker”.  Each name fits beautifully.  To enjoy one more generation, my Dad’s name means “gift” & my Mom’s name is the female version of my Dad’s name.  I hope you enjoy a wee bit of time treasuring the “you-ness” of your name.

What lead me to reflecting on names & meanings at this point in time?  Ideas come to me all the time.  I thrive on that & absolutely love that.  Recently, it occurred to me that although I tend to name everything that I can some version of the tea theme, that within the initial name of our community, I had missed an opportunity in the name.  The overall name was of course, “Exactly Teatime” with the motto of “this community is our cup of tea.”  A couple of neat things evolved.  One is that although the community started out as one for folks with type 1, type 2 or other forms of diabetes & family & friends that love us that other folks identified themselves as wanting to become part of our community as well.  These folks are people that have other ongoing health struggles which soon became dearly referenced as folks with “365” health challenges since there are so very many ongoing health challenges.  That lead me to love the idea of enhancing the name of our community so I went ahead & came up with a different community name still with my usual “tea” theme (with a twist) & updated motto.  It dawned on me that since I write the blogs & have type 1 diabetes, that it would be helpful to include that clue somewhere obvious on our community website.  There the name emerged, “Exactlyt1d time”.  On a humourous note, Dear Hearts who know me well know that one of my favourite things to say or imply is that it is a good job that we are sharing time together because it is “exactly teatime.”  I have a little cartoon in our kitchen that one of our sons cut out a while ago that has a title on it of” what time is tea time?”  Underneath the title, there is a picture of a clock & the hands are pointed at every number!  Well, that is a little like, when  we have type 1 diabetes…well, draw the hands of the clock…guess what, it looks a lot like the cartoon photo because it is 24 hours a day.  That is how the twist on the previous community writer name emerged.  The motto was a “no brainer” with a “Our diabetes & 365 community is our cuppa.”  For folks who are not addicted to tea, the word, “cuppa” is a British term meaning “cup of tea.”

It will be exciting to have our community soon share thoughts on whether the new community blogger name & motto are each person’s “cup of tea” or not. 

The great thing about our names & names that we choose is that we get to decide whether they fit or not.  Once we find the name that exactly fits each one of us, it is a warm, comfie feeling indeed.

My heart’s hope for you is that you find either a name or a quality that speaks to your heart & that you live your passion with pizzazz.

Smiles, Saundie :)

Enjoy your weekend & please join me again this Monday with the sharing entitled, "Dude, It's About the Pet That You've Got There."