October 21, 2014 | Leave a comment en-: to cause (a person or thing) to be in the place, condition, or state named by the stem. A friend of mine and I were chatting today and he said he had a wonderful breakfast and was now heading to the office. My response was, “Masterful, enjoy!” I then reneged on that and said, “Actually, encourage!” He then told me how he had suffered a minor setback this morning in which he had applied for something and was rejected. I told him that I was “sorry to hear that” (which is a topic for another post) and then I said, “Enfortune!” “Feel this!” How often have you told somebody to “enjoy themselves” without realizing that you’re giving them an order to feel joy? I believe that we strongly desire that other people feel certain emotions. We tell people to not be angry, to not worry, to calm down. We also tell them to be happy, to smile, to appreciate things. I also believe that we want people to feel certain emotions because WE want to feel those emotions and if they are feeling them, then it’s easier for us to feel them as well. I say all this because I want to be more aware of what I tell others to feel. Most of my life I have been told to not be angry and so now when I feel anger, I feel angry about feeling angry, and the cycle never ends until I realize it’s OK to feel what I feel. I’m not saying that wishing that somebody feel a certain way is a bad thing (nor is it a good thing), I’m just drawing attention to how often we’re not mindful of how we tell other people to feel and how we can become more mindful by noticing all those little en- words we use.