It's about the journey

I like words. I like playing with them, I like learning about them, and I occasionally enjoy finding out where they come from. One word whose origin I've learned about is "righteous". It occurred to me that it could have originally been pronounced "right-wise" (and looking it up quickly on a site about etymology, that idea appears to be confirmed.) As "clock-wise" means "going the way the clock goes", "right-wise" means "going the right way".

That's a comforting thought. It means that we don't need to have arrived, to already be perfect, in order to be righteous. All we need do is keep moving, however slowly, in the right direction. Right-wiseness is about the journey.


© John M. Munzer