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CONVERSATIONAL VOCABULARY

KEEP HOPE ALIVE

Hi everyone. Aaron here. I’m now going to talk about some of the vocabulary and phrases that Dan and I used in our conversation about hope. Let’s get started.

1. bounty of

The first vocabulary is ‘bounty of’. We were talking about whether or not apes have the capacity to hope and Dan doesn’t think they do. He says that, “I don’t think apes have a hope that, “Wow, I hope next year we have a bounty of bananas.” So ‘bounty of’. What does that mean, ‘bounty’? A ‘bounty is something that is given or provided in very large amounts.

One of the ways that you will hear this word used is in the sense of a payment for killing a person or an animal. For example, in the state of Florida right now, there is an infestation of Burmese pythons. These are very large snakes that originally are from Southeast Asia but because the climate is very warm and many pet owners have let the snakes go, they are proliferating, they are growing in number and it’s becoming a real problem. The government actually pays a bounty on each snake that is killed and brought in. So if you see one of these snakes and you kill it, you can bring it to a special office and they will pay you for the body of that snake. It’s a bounty. So a person who kills for money like that is a bounty-hunter.

But that’s not the meaning that Dan was talking about. He meant the amount of a crop, the total amount of a fruit or a vegetable that is produced by a farm or by a tree or by nature. So we often talk about bounties of nature, the things that nature provides us with: the food, the sustenance that nature gives us, the bounties of a farm. So all the fruits and the vegetables and the plants that we can use to eat and live off of, those are the bounties of the earth. So when you hear that word, think about an amount that is produced and given. That’s generally what it means. It has a very positive meaning in that sense. Of course, the bounty for in terms of money for killing something isn’t quite as positive.

1. back off

The next one is ‘back off’ and this is what Dan says in the very next sentence. He thinks that or he’s saying that apes hope that humans just back off and stop killing us. In this case, the apes are hoping that the humans will draw back from their action of killing to cease their action of attacking the apes. To draw back confrontation. To stop being involved. To stop attacking.

For example, maybe in my neighborhood recently the police have been patrolling very heavily. They’re always present. They’re always watching and I feel that it’s intrusive and I think they should back off; they should stop patrolling our neighborhood so heavily. So I’m hoping or wishing that they would just kind of go away and reduce the intensity with which they are patrolling. I want them to back off. I want them to stop being so persistent and aggressive in their attempt to get me to buy something by disturbing me at home. I want them to back off.

Another example might be, recently many sales people have been ringing our door bell and trying to sell us things. I wish they would back off. I’m tired of then disturbing me at home. I want them to back off. I want them to stop being so persistent and aggressive in their attempt to get me to buy something by disturbing me at home. I want them to back off.

You can use this as a command. You can tell people, “Hey, back off. You’re too close,” or, “Back off. You’re bothering me.” So if someone’s bothering you, tell them to back off, to stop pressuring you or to stop being so aggressive or confrontational with you.

So we have ‘bounty of’, we have ‘back off’.

1. rambling

The next one is ‘rambling’. Dan and I were talking for several minutes and I say, “I haven’t met any happy people that were in despair. But the people in the story…” And Dan says, “Yeah, let’s get to some real people. I feel like we’re rambling. I feel like we’re rambling. Let’s start talking about the story.”

‘To ramble’ means to talk on and on in a very long winded way without any real purpose, in a meandering way, sometimes a confusing way without any real meaning. Some people when they talk, they’re not very clear, they’re not very concise. They ramble. Oftentimes you’ll hear this verb as a phrasal verb, ‘to ramble on’.

For example, Fred, my friend Fred, he just rambles on and on and on about whatever topic. Yesterday, he was talking about the war in Syria and he just rambled on and on and on for what seemed like hours and nobody listened to him. They were tired of hearing him ramble on.

The politician on TV yesterday gave a rambling speech that inspired nobody. It just confused them. It didn’t make any sense. So when you speak to people, you should try to deliver a message. You shouldn’t just ramble. But instead you should organize your thoughts and deliver them in a concise and powerful way. That’s a better way to communicate.

1. seize the moment

The next one is ‘seize the moment’. This is what Dan says when he’s talking about the Colonel that wanted to give the hostages that were captured by the FARC and were living in the jungle and were isolated from the communities and their friends and their family. He wanted to give them a message of hope. He wanted to communicate through music, through Morse code in the music to give them hope so that they would be able to seize the moment to escape.

This is to take advantage of an opportunity that is in front of you when you seize the moment. It’s very close to the meaning of the Latin phrase ‘carpe diem’ which sometimes is interpreted as ‘seize the day’ which comes from Latin. Basically, that means seize the moment, seize the day, seize the opportunity. To ‘seize’ something is to catch it, to take advantage of it.

We should always try to seize the moment and live without regret. Let’s take action now. Let’s not wait for it. You shouldn’t spend so much time looking into the future or dwelling on the past but you should take advantage of what you have now and learn to enjoy it and just make the best of it. They say you only live once, so seize the moment. There’s no time to wait. Do it now.

How about you? Have you ever seized the moment and took advantage of something available to you and in return received a great deal of joy and excitement? Sometimes we need to seize the day. We only have one chance at it. So that’s ‘seize the moment’.

1. adrenaline junkies

Let’s move on to the next one. ‘Adrenaline junkies’. Dan’s talking about the service that you can pay $1000 or $2000 to that will kidnap you. They’ll blindfold you, put you in a car and drive off. And I ask Dan, “Well, what’s the purpose of this?” And he says, “Oh, I think it’s just people like adrenaline junkies who want to feel fear.”

So there are actually two vocabulary words here. One is ‘adrenaline’. ‘Adrenaline’ is a hormone that is secreted or produced in times of great stress or fear. And when that hormone courses through your blood veins and arteries, it helps you to feel energized. It helps you feel stronger, resistant to pain or even feel no pain and your heartbeat’s very fast and your breath gets very shallow. Adrenaline. I’m sure all of you have experienced it in times of fear or great, great excitement. Some people get addicted to it. They like that feeling.

Someone who is addicted, especially to a drug like heroin or opium, we can call those people ‘junkies’ and they’re often called ‘junkies’. So ‘junkie’ is a person who is addicted to drugs, originally. Nowadays, we use the term ‘junkie’, it has expanded to other objects.

Maybe we can talk about, let’s say a ‘video game junkie’. This is a person who’s addicted to video games. They can’t stop playing video games. They love video games. Or you might find a ‘rock and roll junkie’. Someone who just only wants to listen to rock and roll, and they love it and they know everything about it. They’re a rock and roll junkie. A ‘comic book junkie’. A ‘movie junkie’.

So anyone who’s really addicted to something, they get lots and lots of pleasure from it, they can’t stop doing it, those are ‘junkies’. Are you a junkie in any way?

That’s an adrenaline junkie. People who are addicted to adrenaline. The feeling of being amped up or energized in times of stress or fear.

1. fold up

The next one is ‘fold up’. This is a phrasal verb that Dan uses when he’s talking about how hope can sustain people’s energy and it helps then to stay positive in very difficult situations. When people are like that, they can overcome great challenges and heal themselves of illnesses like cancer, et cetera. However, someone who’s really hopeless, they’re just going to fold up. That’s what he says. They’re going to fold up.

What it means by that is just to kind of give up. To ‘fold up’ means to give up. It means to wither. It means to not try anymore. To kind of die. To become useless. To just fall completely apart.

Actually, the verb ‘fold’ in this sense comes from the game poker that you play with cards. For those of you who have played poker, when you have a really bad hand that you know you can’t win with, you fold. That means you lay your cards down and you give up before the end of the game. And in doing so, you can actually save yourself money if you’re betting because you don’t continue the betting process; you stop early. That’s a good strategy when you’re playing many games if you want to actually want to win money by the end of the night.

So ‘to fold’ means to give up. And when you fold, you stop doing, stop trying. Or you just break down. You don’t work correctly. You don’t function normally. Some people are known to fold under pressure on a job, for example. Or in some kind of performance, if they’re under a lot of pressure, they fold easily. They break down. They can’t make decisions anymore. They avoid difficult situations. They become ineffective. They fold.

Some people fold on their stress. They don’t handle it well. They have symptoms that cause them to experience failure under stressful situations. Or they lose control of their emotions in stressful situations.

Some people fold when they’re confronted by other people or confronted by a difficult situation. They just can’t deal with it. They give up or they lose their composure. Yeah, life is difficult and you can fold.

So Dan uses a phrasal verb, ‘fold up’. But often you hear this in terms of just ‘fold’. Have you ever folded under pressure? Have you ever folded in a difficult situation? What causes you to fold up? That’s an interesting term there.

1. wallowing

We just have a few more. The next one is ‘wallowing’. I like this word, ‘wallowing’. It’s a verb. So Dan’s talking about… Actually, this is me. Sorry, this is not Dan. This is me. I’m talking about how, when I’m in a difficult situation if I assert myself and I work hard to try to make things different, to try and make things better, then maybe that’s where hope lies. When you’re trying to just change your situation for the better, you have hope and maybe you’re planting seeds of hope. It’s better than feeling hopeless and wallowing in despair, wallowing in hopelessness, wallowing in sadness, wallowing in depression.

To ‘wallow’, originally this word meant or means and still does mean, to roll around in muddy water, in sort of a lazy kind of relaxed way. So we think of animals like pigs, to roll around in the mud very happily. Or hippos, hippopotamuses that spend lots of time in the mud just sitting there doing nothing because it feels good and they love to do it and not really accomplishing anything. They’re just wallowing. They’re sitting there. So hippos wallow in the mud. Buffalos wallow in the mud. Then we can take that concept and apply it to negative emotions. Some people wallow in their sorrow and despair. That means they don’t take any action to get out of it.

We go back to this situation where my daughter was very sick. Rather than wallow in despair and sadness, I took action and researched it and found ways to try and understand the situation and deal with it. I didn’t just sit back and do nothing and wallow.

People who wallow in their sorrow and despair make the situation worse in most cases. So it’s not good to wallow in despair. You should seize the day. You should really take advantage of all the opportunities that are around you.

Do you ever wallow in laziness? Sometimes I wallow in laziness. Recently, I haven’t but I’m known to do that sometimes. But I don’t try to ever wallow in depression or sadness. It’s just not a good place to be. And if I ever start feeling that way, I take action to change my point of view and start looking at all the good things that are around me and what I’m really thankful for, all the blessings that surround me. And that takes the sadness and the depression away immediately.

1. It goes both ways.

So let’s move on to the very last one. This is a phrase and it’s ‘it goes both ways’. This is kind of a difficult one to explain. We’re talking about hope and surviving cancer and other serious illnesses. Dan is saying that people who are more likely to survive cancer were those who were hopeful. But what he says is that maybe actually the hope didn’t come first. It was actually the recognition of the state of their condition that came first which caused hope.

For example, they found out that they have cancer and then their cancer was not very advanced. So they had hope that it could get better. Dan also argues that people’s condition, when they found out that it’s really bad, that they’re really close to death, that they give up. They don’t have hope and that’s why they’re hopeless. So that makes sense. That seems reasonable because if you’re close to death then what is there to hope for. Maybe you just give up. Whereas if your condition is not as serious as it sounds, then you have hope; that causes hope. What I respond by saying is, “Yeah, that’s true, Dan. It could be. But I think it goes both ways. I think some people just start with hope. So maybe those people when they find out that their illness is really, really serious and they’re about to die, they go with their hope and they say, “Well, yeah, I’m going to die anyway but maybe there’s a chance. And if I fight hard enough and I try hard enough, that this could get better and I could conquer this illness.””

And for people who find out, “Oh, I have cancer,” and even though it may not be a very progressed form, it might not be a very aggressive form, maybe the chance of actually overcoming it is very high. But because they’re negative people, they think negatively, they don’t see the positive side. They say, “Oh, I have cancer,” and they start to generate lots and lots of despair and depression and it just makes the situation worse and they end up dying.

What Dan is saying and what I am saying are different. They’re different perspectives but they’re both valid. And when we’re in that situation where we have two different perspectives and both of them actually can be true, that’s when we would use, ‘it goes both ways’. It’s a ‘two- way street’ is another way to say it. It’s a two-way street. Meaning that both possibilities could be true and valid even though they are completely different perspectives. The perspectives don’t agree but they could be true. So it goes both ways and that’s what it means.

Okay. I’m going to sign off here. I hope that my commentary was useful to you. If you ever have any questions at all, please do post them in our members forum and we’ll be happy to answer your question and share our opinion with you.

All right. Take care now. Bye-bye.