A: Do you like to write?
B: Absolutely!
A: So you’re a writer?
B: Oh no no no no. *waves hand modestly*.
Nothing like that.
As the title
suggests, this post is about the great debate between nouns and verbs. In case
you’re racking your head in an attempt to figure out which particular debate
this one refers to (given that there are probably so many of them), I’ll
mention right here that the one I’m talking about might not exist (at least, it
seemed to draw a blank with Google).
So, I’m
going to start it.
And while
this particular topic might have been inspired by dousing myself in grammar
over the last few months, it actually has little to do with it. In fact, it is
about something far more important and difficult to grasp: life itself (*cue gasping
and cringing*).
Now, without
further digression (there’ll be plenty of that later), let me put forward my
motion for this debate:
Nouns suck.
Verbs are awesome.
There.
For those of
you who are not familiar with the technicalities, here’s a quick grammatical
overview: nouns are words that, among many other things, show who or what a
person is. For example, a child, Peter Parker, female, teacher, etc. On the
other hand, a verb is more about the things a person does. For example: walk,
talk, run, sit, teach, etc.
On their
own, the two seem fairly harmless, but I’ve recently come to realize that the
former has destroyed more dreams and lives than one could fathom (okay, maybe
the ‘what will others say’ might take the trophy for that, but nouns are a
close second).
The first
problem with nouns is that they stop people from fully claiming the things they
do. A friend of mine really enjoys sketching (and is quite good at it), but
when asked if she’s an artist, she’ll shake her head vigorously. Another friend
who will dance at the sound of any beat refuses to call himself a dancer. “I
like to dance,” he says. “But I’m not a dancer.”
And yes, I
get that most of these words – teacher, dancer, cricketer, writer, artist –
have a connotation that suggests a level of expertise, and so are kept mostly
for the “professionals”. But the result of this professionalization is that the
verbs, which are accessible to and enjoyed by every other person, suddenly need
an external body to certify them as being good enough to be nouns.
This closely
connects with how we view everything we do in our lives, and even more so with
that one thing that our lives seem to revolve around: our careers. These nouns have
associated themselves with a question that has haunted me (and I’m assuming
others) for a large part of their lives:
“What do you
want to be when you grow up?”
For those of
you who’ve had a clear answer to that question from the day you were born, I
guess it really isn’t a problem. But for the select few who’ve felt beads of
sweat begin to form the moment these words threw themselves at you, the
following might be a relatable struggle.
A: What do
you want to be when you grow up?
B:
Uhh…well….I guess…I dunno….a doctor maybe? I’m not really sure though.
Although I’m
known to all as that confused soul who can never quite figure out my career, I’m
starting to wonder if the problem isn’t in my lack of clarity (though the
indecisiveness really doesn’t help); there is just a slight chance that the
problem is actually in the question: the expected answer is a noun. It’s a
bloody noun that will define the rest of your life. How on earth is a
high-school student (or anyone, for that matter) expected to seal their entire
fate through one noun?
Imagine if
the same question were replaced with a verb.
A: What do
you want to be when you grow up?
B:
Uhh…well….I guess…I dunno….a doctor maybe? I’m not really sure though.
A: Well,
what are some things that you would want to do?
B: Oh. Let’s
see. I want to write stories, dance, teach, learn filmmaking, study biology in
more detail, swim in the sea, travel all over the country, cycle to another
city…
A: Okay
okay! That’s sounds like an unending list. Which of these do you want to get
started on for now?
See the
difference? Verbs.
As an
individual, there are so many things that I enjoy doing or would want to do,
yet somehow, when it comes to careers, it’s always about “becoming someone”.
Sure, occasionally the career counsellors would try to simplify things for us
by saying, “Why don’t we begin with the things you enjoy doing.” Yet we’ve
always been told to choose one thing out of this list to make a career out of,
and relegate everything else under the heading ‘hobby’ – something you enjoy
doing but will never actually have the time for.
And there’s something
really messed up about this, right? There are so many people stuck in careers
they don’t want to be in, because at some point in their hormone-crazed years,
they (or more likely their parents) decided who they would become, instead of
what they would actually want to do. Of course, there are responsibilities,
and I’m not trying to diminish their importance. But we read stories of that
guy in his mid-forties who left his fancy corporate job to start up a new venture,
and we applaud him for his courage, and this reaction only reiterates that what
this guy did is not the norm – that actively pursuing things you enjoy doing is
not the norm. That change is not the norm. That diversity of interests is not
the norm. That the thirst for different kinds of experiences is not the norm.
The norm is that we choose who or what we want to be at the age of 18 (or,
apparently, even before you hit puberty), and we spend the rest of our lives
becoming or being that person, no matter where our interests might want to take us (I really think that “being” shouldn’t
even qualify as a verb).
All this
because of nouns.
I mean,
sure, society and individual choices might have a little something to do with
this, but they’re nothing compared to the nouns. And that is why, we really
need to reduce the importance we give to nouns, and began looking much more
seriously at verbs.
I’ll end my
piece by re-stating my original words of wisdom:
Nouns suck.
Verbs are awesome.
(Unless you
have to actually teach these things. Then, verbs will make you want to
re-evaluate every decision that led to you standing in front of 40 confused 3rd
graders staring at you blankly while you attempt to explain tenses and rules).
