Zany

Today I am grateful for words; their variety, their many meanings, their knack to fit just right at just the right time, their ability to inspire the writer in me. I am also grateful for humor among recovery friends.

To wrap-up my weeks-long journey through the alphabet, I am picking zany. I have always considered zany to be just an adjective: amusingly unconventional, fantastically or absurdly ludicrous, showing or marked by a lack of good sense or judgment. But it can also be a noun: the clown or the buffoon, the one who plays the fool to amuse others. I had never considered the word zany much before the last couple of days. It always amazes me how so many words have so much more to them than meets the eye, so much more than our limited experience and use of them.

In my mind, zany described a person who was a little crazy, but almost in a good way. Someone who was willing to take risks and look a bit foolish, but someone who was free and comfortable in their own skin. That was never me. I guess I latched on to that definition of zany because I wanted to be a little zanier. I was far too inhibited and far too afraid of judgment to show a healthy zaniness from time to time.

I'm still not much for that zany stuff, but I do have zany ideas from time to time. And here's a zany idea I saw on my tea bag yesterday afternoon: "The beauty of life is to experience yourself."

In my late teens and early twenties, that was the last thing I wanted. I was trying to escape myself. Alcohol was an effective escape mode. It took me a long time to actually want to know myself better and to find myself likeable. But today that once-zany idea is now a big part of my life's journey. For that, I am deeply grateful.

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