You know how a song can get stuck in your head? Sometimes that happens to me with words. Something happens that prompts a word to pop into consciousness, and then it rattles around in my head for awhile. I have to deal with it to make it go away—look up the origin or definition of it, or write about it.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the word resolve. I looked it up. Resolve can be a verb or a noun.
You can resolve a problem by clearing it up, by making it understandable, and by finding a solution to it. Resolve can also mean you come to a firm decision about something, sometimes by a formal vote. Resolve can mean something gets reduced or changed by separating it into smaller components. as in chemistry. In music, it means making two distinct voices move from dissonance to consonance.
When you use resolve as a noun your purpose has become fixed into resoluteness, perhaps even in a formal way—in a resolution.
I know why resolve has been the latest word stuck in my head. It’s past time that we resolve the issue of gun violence in the United States. Let’s resolve to break it down into pieces that can be understood and then solved. Let’s find a way to move from frustrating dissonance to achievable consonance. Let’s find some resolute determination for a formal resolution before more children are killed.
This week I am resolved to write my congressional representatives. If you are in the US, you can find yours by going here: Find Your Members
a writing prompt
Write your members in Congress.
And/or write about the word resolve. What needs resolving in your world today? What are you resolved about?
