washing dishes: a father’s glimpses

I’m geeking out over a couple of words today:

• diffident (adjective): 1. lacking confidence in one’s own ability, worth, or fitness; timid; shy. 2. restrained or reserved in manner, conduct, etc. 3. (archaic) distrustful.
• embroil (verb, used with object): 1. to bring into discord or conflict; involve in contention or strife. 2. to throw into confusion; complicate.

I’m toggling between the lacking confidence definition and the restraint-reserved definition, and how I’ve used my stoicism as a way to hide my unease and unsureness of how to proceed, interact, or speak up. I got to diffident as I wanted to double-check my notion of feeling bashful after not giving a gift that I could have given to a friend. A word challenge is to work diffident into my sentences a few times in the next week.

Then, there’s the rhyme of embroil with boil, which is a metaphor for the hot water nature of conflict and discord. I delight in the confusions and complications that come after contentious interactions that leave me wondering where I’m at whether that is in my personal life, at work, with a friend or someone in a community.