A little while ago, okay let’s be honest more than a little while ago, sometime in October 2020 I gave myself the challenge to actually do as many writing prompts as I could. It sparked the ‘get to know me and rambles’ section on my blog. This week I revisited the idea of what I could do, blog about, or write about. Mainly as I now I’m through the worst of the pandemic life changes, I’m settled, and ready to revisit the world of general blog writing as I was before and fiction writing, I started to think about this challenge I set myself, not too long ago, way back when!

The news has been a wonderful source of inspiration as honestly there is so much happening in the world right now. Much of it I don’t agree with. But who wants to jump on the soapbox and be political all the time *rolls eyes*. Don’t get me wrong, activism and advocating, or even expressing views are wonderful things, I’m all for it, but I do it a lot LOL.

I put my thinking cap on and thought: why not write about words for a bit and see where it goes? Language is such an interesting thing and being bi-lingual English and French, English being my first language, it is wonderful to see similarities between languages ( especially when there’s a stark contrast ‘generally speaking’ between English and French), and it’s great to understand where words come from.

I opened the dictionary’s that’s on my desk randomly this evening at the time of writing this, my eyes landed on the world ‘generally’. This is a word I use a lot in my own speech. ‘Generally speaking’, ‘in general’ I find myself saying a-hella-lot when I reflected.

So what is this word all about and where did it come from? How did it enter the English language?

‘Generally’

Adverb: 1. in most cases. 2. without regard for details. 3. widely.

This is according to the English dictionary. From research ‘generally’ stems from the word ‘general.’ It came from influence from the ‘old French’ language around 1200, and directly from the Latin word generalis (relating to all). Around the 14th century it was first used in the English language according to Merriam-Webster dictionary

In Life is ‘Generally’ a good thing or bad?

I really started to think about this, generalisation (or generalization for my American friends), and generality are both linked to the word ‘generally’. Meaning: a broad statement, common, a general statement rather than specific.

Generalisation or to look at things generally, are both useful I think when we look at things like data and statistics. This I learned in university, as part of my research project. It is really helpful to give you an overview of things in a very ‘general way,’ so you can build up a picture and make an educated or informed decision about something. That said, to generalise people, situations, places, or things not for data or statistical purposes may not be such a great thing.

Why so? Well, I feel that generalisation or being very general with one’s view on situations, people, places, or things  can and does at times lead to things like stereotypes, preconceived ideas about a person, situation, place, or thing. This to me firstly as a woman of colour is not a good thing, there are too many of these generalisations, preconceived ideas, and stereotypes that sound this demographic of people already! If you know, you know, if you don’t get it you really need ‘to walk a mile in our shoes’ as the saying goes.

Secondly, I feel that the same applies to others also, all the ‘isms’ are free to run wild. By this I  mean discrimination and stereotypes based on sex, age, income, disability, sexuality, religion all the things that the world loves to use to ‘separate’ people, and often times not for very good, logical, or reasonable reasons.

So, ‘generally speaking’ outside of using generalisations, and looking at what generally is the norm outside of data collection, for facts, statistics, academic, scientific, and medical research to me it’s not a good thing in life. You really need to take each person or situation as an individual to a certain extent, before you generalise them or it. People, places, situations, and things should not be generalised too much.

If on the other hand the generalisation is based on personal experience, and you have had enough experience to qualify your generalisation or feeling generally about something, a situation, person, place, or thing–now that’s different. It’s a bit like collecting data for statistics ( you’ve had enough experiences) to give you an ‘average’ or ‘norm’ and can then generalise or have a feeling generally.

What do you think, is it good to generalise, or be general in life?