Una Palabra Sola Episode 14, merecer
The ego is necessary in language-learning and beyond - egos are driven usually by values. Values come from what we think we deserve - or merecer.
merecer: (v) to deserve
Related words: merecido, merecida (adj), merecedor (n), merecer bien vs. merecer la pena
Synonyms: justo (fair), valor (value), ameritar (to merit), valer la pena (be worth it), ser digno/a de (be deserving)
Antonyms: injusto (unfair), inmerecido (undeserved), gratis (free), desmerecer (to not deserve)
From the Latin “merēre”, to have merit or be deserving of a prize
The ego is necessary in life and in language. What do you believe you deserve?
It’s not about the event; it’s how we think about the event.
Our thoughts matter. We can prime our brains to keep an eye out for something - use the RAS for todas las cosas bonitas.
There’s a yin and yang to this whole merecer thing- ¿mereces bien o mereces la pena?
For reflection:
How does perception and context aid you in your life? Do you wait to move forward until you have context? How can you make sure your perception shows the full picture? ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Think of the full Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: do you have food, water, shelter, and clothing? Do you have people to trust in and play with? (As an adult, are you playing enough?) And are you showing love for others and also receiving love? ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
What are you defining and working towards for yourself? What promises are you fulfilling to yourself? Do you feel like you can trust yourself - and if not, how can you work on that relationship with yourself? ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
**¡ÉXTRA! Be sure to check out Melissa’s Neuro Nugget at: melissahughes.rocks
Una PS has been a labor of love from the beginning. If you’d like to join our lil’ love fest via the Deseo program, click here to sign up! We all have our own wishes and desires when it comes to language, and with some resources and accountability, I can help make yours come true.
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Hola y bienvenidos. Hello and welcome to Una Palabra Sola, where we get to learn Spanish one word at a time. I'm your host, Megan Miller, founder and teacher at Aprovechar Language Solutions. Empezamos and let's dive in.
Hola, hola, otra vez. Hello and welcome back to Una Palabra Sola, a podcast where we get to learn Spanish one word at a time. I'm your host, Megan Miller, and... sometimes these words that, that I talk about, that I -- ramble on about or they come up in conversation, or they come up, as like, I don't know, there's one letter difference between juzgar, which is to judge, and jugar, which is to play. And you don't want to play with your judges.
Things like that. Sometimes, however, these words pop up just -- as thoughts in my head. Where, for example, lately I've been thinking about confidence and ego, and -- I read somewhere on the internet, so it must be true, that your baseline, so when you're feeling really not confident in yourself -- sometimes that can feel like arrogance, right, because your baseline is so far over on the other side of the spectrum that you don't even know what confidence -- feels like.
Basically, the point of the internet quote was like feelings are really shitty baselines, because how we feel may not be how others perceive us. All of that is to say, random internet quotes aside, I've been thinking a lot about confidence and ego, both in language learning and business and life, uh, just -- how we all finagle and manage our way through this weird little wormhole called life.
2:11
And specifically around business: this is a practice that I've started to do and really anyone that feels strongly about something, I feel like you can give it a try too. Uh, I'm not going to should down your throat, but it's helped me, so it might help you. And that is writing (by hand, because I'm an old soul) writing by hand, five whys every morning. So these are why I'm doing this, why I get up and go to the gym and eat a healthy-ish breakfast, if there's no croissants, and why I do business and why I choose this business and why I choose my clients and why, why, why, why, why. Ironically, it was also one of my favorite questions to ask as a kid, and it's great, because as an adult, I get to answer.
Five whys. This is just a little habit that I've picked up, uh, after joining one of the many business cohorts, and masterminds, and self-help guides, and trying a lot of different things, because... Yes, starting a business is hard. It's not the taxes that make it hard. It's not the sales and learning what sales actually is that makes it hard. It's, it's not the never-ending admin work. It's not, you know, sending an email immediately getting a response back. And you can never get that thing off of your to do list because you just keep emailing until you die. Business is not that hard when it comes down to it, especially when you're in that flow state. What's tough about business and what's tough about really any -- creative pursuit is that me versus me fight. That tends to happen, that tends to pop up, right? Your demons, in and of themselves, in your head, they don't really get that much voice in corporate or in society, until, and they get real fucking loud, until you start going out on your own. Until you start doing things on your own.
And so the five whys just help calm some of those demons, the imposter syndrome, the confidence issues, all of the things that happen in my head. If that feels aligned, definitely try it. Why do I get up in the morning? Why? Why am I doing this thing? Why did I choose to do Spanish in, quite honestly, a really fucky way? It's a lot of mindset and routine, and it's not necessarily, the teacher in the Peanuts going, Merp, merp, merp, merp, verb tenses. That's not my jam. I don't like teaching to a book. I don't even really like holding books, workbooks… although I do have a workbook for sale. It is very interactive. Taking a step back, because as you can tell, I'm already pretty rambly right now. One of those five whys. Number two, actually, on the list brings us to our word. Reining in the circus that is my brain. Reining that shit in. Bringing us to our word.
5:47
Which is, ironically, one of my five whys. Which is, yo creo que merecemos entender a los demás. I believe, wholeheartedly, that we deserve to understand everyone else. And we also deserve to be and feel understood. So merecer, to deserve, is our word for today. Es un verbo. It is a verb. Merecer, fun fact, it is a yo diphthong verb. I just really wanted to say diphthong, but it means that when it is conjugated, the yo, the “I”, form is irregular. It is merezco. And then the rest of the conjugation is just the same as any other ER verb out in the world. Mereces, merece, merecemos, merecen.
All right, so merecer really means to deserve. It is from the Latin merere, which I am probably butchering worse than an actual butcher. But this Latin etymology is really interesting because it means to have merit or to be deserving of a prize. So really, Latin was the original participation trophy; let's just get that out there. So, to have merit, to be deserving of a prize. You can have some sinónimos, ser digno de, which is basically to be worthy. Valer la pena, so if something is vale la pena, it means that it is worth the pain, literally. If it's worth it, uh, then it would be vale la pena. If it is not worth it, it would be no vale la pena. So, for example, a friend texts me and says, hey Megan, I'm having a get together. It starts at 9 o'clock tonight. Well, I don't usually leave my house after nine, so I say, No vale la pena. I will see you another time. Versus, same friend, says, hey Megan, I'm getting people over tonight. It starts at seven, and you'll be home by nine, and I'll go, Yes, vale la pena. I will be there.
You also have otros sinónimos ameritar, which is to merit. Ameritar. If you see ameritar, it has merit buried in there, baked in there. Ameritar. You also have valor. So, if valer la pena means to be worth the pain, this is valor. This is the sustantivo. This is the noun. Basically, to be valued. Or, a value, valor. You also have justo. Justo, I'm getting very hard on the J's today but, justo is just fair. If something es justo, it's fair, right? You speed down a road, I don't know, you do 80 miles an hour during a school zone. Es justo, it's fair that you're probably going to get a ticket, right? You should probably pay that.
9:11
Antónimos of merecer. So, antonyms of to deserve. First one, injusto. Unfair. Es tan injusto. It's so unfair. Just makes me think of all the teenage years and the slammed doors and oh, god, could not pay me enough to go back there. You can also have inmerecido. Inmerecido is your adjective. If something is inmerecido, it means that it is undeserving. Una experiencia inmerecida. It is an undeserving experience. You can also have something that is gratis. Fun fact, gratis is technically, at least according to Maria Moliñer and her Diccionario del Uso de Español, gratis es un antónimo de merecer. So, free is an antonym of to deserve. So maybe we don't deserve free things. And then you also have desmerecer. So, D E S, desmerecer, basically means to not deserve. To undeserve, if you will.
10:18
So, all of that is to say, when we talk and think about deserving something, there's always an ego, right? It is a dog and a pony show here today. When we deserve, there's going to be an ego there that says, Do you deserve this? Do you deserve bad things? Do you deserve good things? This is where we can think about karma, and what energy are we putting out in the world? What are we deserving? What do we think that we deserve? Right? This is where over-privilege really comes to mind. So, picture any reality TV star, uh, if you don't know any, you know the archetype. Do they deserve good things? Do they deserve bad things? And when we think about that; before you get too catty on me, I’m going to stop you here. Because, we are all human, right? We are all at least theoretically, hypothetically, on the same plane of existence. We are all theoretically, hypothetically, deserving of some core universal truths. This can get a little metaphysical, a little woo, a little fill in the blank, but merecer, me hace pensar, it makes me think of a horoscope.
11:59
So, events happen and they can be very generic events, but when we apply feelings and emotions to it, that's where the emotional and mental spin-up comes up. For example, some related words of merecer, you can merecer bien, which is like, to deserve the good things. Like, mereces cosas bonitas, you deserve pretty things. You can also merecer la pena. For example, uh, you, you bump into somebody and stub your toe. Some might say that you deserve to get hurt because you weren't watching where you were going. Like, that's a very generic event there. Same thing, mostly because I live in a state where people essentially drive blindfolded. If you're texting and driving and you get into a crash, you, you deserve, you know, all the drama, all the spin off that that, that comes out of that, right? The neck pain, the back pain, the insurance.
It's very simple, or it's very easy, I think, for us to judge other people based on what we think they deserve. Versus if you take a step back, and you say, mm, we're all humans, we're all just trying our best. And whether you truly believe that, or if that's just something that you say, are two different things. But when we think about a horoscope, come with me here. It's going to be 30 seconds of a ride. So, events happen, and your horoscope may say something very, very generic, because that's how they're written.
Like, you may run into a pleasant stranger. Now, the fun fact about that horoscope is not what it says. It's not what paper you read it in. It's not if you're playing a song in the background. It doesn't matter. What matters is what your brain does with that information. And our brains actually work very similarly when this happens, which is odd, because usually we're very individual and unique, this actually activates the RAS, or the reticular activating system in your brain. So, dear friend and neuroscientist, Dr. Melissa Hughes, describes the RAS like your brain's bouncer. So, if you want to check out more of her work, I highly recommend, it's melissahughes.rocks.; that'll be in the show notes.
14:39
But, all brain stuff aside, it means that your brain's bouncer is basically primed. So, you may be primed to run into somebody, literally, figuratively, emotionally, and you may also be primed to look for pleasantness. So, you might notice that people are a little bit more pleasant that day, versus unpleasant.
If you run into an old grumpy man in the grocery store and he's like, meh, watch where you're going. You're like, Nope, that's not what I'm looking for. I may run into a pleasant stranger, because my horoscope told me. I'm going to go, I don't know, check out guy on aisle 15. It doesn't really matter about the event itself, but it's actually about how you're perceiving that event. And perception and context, especially when we talk about deserving or blame or judgment: big, heavy topics and words here. When you're perceiving that event, that is very individual to you. And the importance of perception and context with judgment, uh, is It's something to, to keep in mind because that changes between Spanish and English.
In English, we are very blame-driven. He did this. I did this. Well, don't look at me. I was over here. He was the one doing 80 in a school zone. We're very pronoun driven, meaning we are very individual, I, versus everybody else. They, we, ubiquitous you. In Spanish, what we have is the impersonal se. If something happened, and it was purely by accident, you put that little impersonal se in there, and you go, Oh, se cayó. It fell. He didn't knock it over. It just fell. Right? Some brujería, some witchcraft, I don't know. It fell. Se cayó. You don't say, I broke my arm. You say, my arm broke. Just those little tiny nuances between possession and culpability in events.
17:19
How the event happened, how we perceive the event, which is more important than what the actual event was. All of that is to say, it's really important when we think about a verb like merecer, to kind of dig through some of our own judgments and beliefs and thoughts and just knee jerk reactions. When we think about universal truths or rights that are inherent to being human. What do we all deserve at a base level? It's kind of like, uh, Zombieland. Where you might have, like, an Emma Stone character, you might have a stoner character. You might have whatever archetype or stereotype that you can think of. Universally, what do we deserve? Maybe we all deserve a chance, because we're trying our best. Maybe we all deserve to have some sort of faith in a collective, maybe we deserve to have certain things, right? Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs used to be food, shelter, clothing, and water. Food, water, clothing, shelter.
Shelter has become like at least a six-bedroom McMansion. Food has become organic and non-GMO and bone broth, or whatever celebrity diet you choose to, to follow, or kale, whatever. Clothing became the hot new designer. Water became sparkling water, bubbly water, fancy water, or just bottled water. Alright, so as we've stretched this hierarchy of needs... And gone after the more materialistic aspect of it, we forget about the other needs. Yes, there are other parts of that pyramid. So... play, having fun, laughing, belonging, feeling psychologically safe, freedom and trust to have a good cry with a friend, or to deep belly laugh, and just tears streaming down your face when you talk about an experience or a joke or whatnot, right? Love, not only as a concept, but also as a verb. Showing love for others. Having love demonstrated for you. To you. With you. So that little pyramid of play and belonging, it's almost like the material things were a lot easier to go after and find. Like little Pokemon cards, but then when it comes to talk about our emotions or, or what we deserve or what we want out of life, that becomes a lot trickier.
20:35
That's where a lot of the thoughts and feelings and -- the emotional spin up happen. Because remember, it's not about the event. It's not about what happened in your life; it's about how you tell that story, it's about how you think about that, how you perceive those events, the context of those events, the implicitness in the event. Because the event happened, right? Whatever that is. Somebody leaves you, ghosts you, dies, comes into your life, wrecks whatever, takes whatever. Whatever has happened, because a lot of shit happens in life, right? That's it's M. O. Whenever that happens, when we talk about that event, it's more about how we're perceiving it; what happened, from our opinion.
And play around with that impersonal se a little bit. I'll put some more grammar bits in the show notes for it, but that takes the guilt, it takes the morality out of it. Like, oh, what happened? Se fue. He left. Ya se fue. He already left. Or she already left. Or whomever. So, when you shape your past to inform your present and your future, especially as we talk about to deserve, what we deserve is not only a collective of human beings, but what you individually deserve. I mean, more and more, just the need for clean drinking water, for clean air, for nature. And time to just frolic amongst some fucking trees. The freedom to use time as your own. Versus owing someone time, owing someone energy. What do you deserve? What do you want to deserve? And out of what you think you deserve, what's actually feasible?
22:47
I don't know about you, but I grew up on a lot of Disney princesses. And the one thing that really struck my impatient-as-all-fuck brain was the fact that I had to wait for somebody to come and rescue me. I was like, nah, I'm not going to do that. I love horses. I'm just going to find a horse and ride out of here on my own. Right? I deserve freedom. That, in my mind, is one of the things that I relish in. It's one of my favorite things, is to have the freedom to move and choose and live life in a very agile way. And if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, fuck you, Megan. Do you think you deserve the same thing? And if you do, what the fuck are you doing about it?
I'm going to challenge you a little bit on that. Challenge with love, I'll say. This whole freedom to decide on what we deserve as a collective, as an individual, that has evolved, right? That freedom of life, of having these -- big analytical questions like, oh, merecer. ¿Qué merezco? What do I deserve? ¿Qué quiero merecer? What do I want to deserve? Or, ¿Qué creo que merezco? What do I think that I deserve? This really happens when you self-actualize, and it sounds very like, I don't know, I went to a Life Coach Google website and I found this phrase, but it is an actual psychological phrase, thank you.
24:34
Self-actualization is when you define and determine for yourself what you deserve. Hey, full circle! So, the self-actualization, it's going through the process of, okay, where am I? Where do I want to be? What do I deserve? What am I going to do to get that? You can really line this up with your own values. For example, for me, uh, I believe that we, as a collective, deserve to love and be loved. To have love shown to us and for us in a very safe, caring, consenting way that is built on words and actions chosen with care. I believe that we deserve to be in charge of our own education. We deserve to educate ourselves to seek information from various sources and learn based on curiosity; not necessarily because someone else requires us to have that information.
I think we deserve to surround ourselves with people, with other people who inspire and educate and lead and govern in a way that really aligns with our core values and aligns with the core piece of humanity. When I think about this, this world and this word, of deserving. It's not one group of people over another one. It is entirely a collective. It is entirely a cohort. Maybe there are some leaders and guides and educators and people of different roles, but it feels like democracy in the purest form of the word. And lastly, I think that we deserve coordination and compromise. Because all good relationships thrive on coordination and compromise, versus that majority versus minority.
There's compromise available throughout. And really, it's not necessarily about the event. It's about the emotions and feelings associated with the event. And when we think about what we deserve, what we are self-actualizing, what we are creating, it's that focus, with Spanish, con el se impersonal. You have that impersonal se, right? That takes some of the morality and the culpability out of it. It takes some of the blame out of it. And it's also with that focus of the pronoun of us. Versus me versus you, or me versus them. So perhaps America is too individualistic for these beliefs. I also know that they'll probably change and evolve.
27:45
Because quite honestly, one thought of one word document that I then use as reference to speak one time is not really indicative of growth or change or evolution. However, it does go back to that original thought. Que merecemos entender a los demás y que nos sentimos entendidos. That we deserve to understand others; understand their point of view, as hard and weird and off-putting as that view can be sometimes. I think we do deserve to averiguar. We deserve to find out what's driving some of their policies that just seem to be built on hate and un mundo injusto. An unjust world. But we do deserve to know. And we also deserve to feel understood. Because it's not just enough to be understood. You can understand me, and you can be shaking your fist and yelling at me the entire time. And that's fine. I know that I'm understood, but I don't feel understood. We don't feel like our vibes are matching, our energy is matching, the focus is not necessarily matching. And that's where that reflexive verb sentirse, to feel, really comes in. Because, yes, merecer, to deserve. You have your ego. Whether that is on the confident side, arrogant side, or doormat side, it can be a prism. You have merecer, whatever you deserve, what you're working to self-actualize, what you're working to create and have more of in the world.
29:53
And those synonyms are worthy, and to be worthwhile, and to merit, and to value, and to be fair. But your related words, remember, merecer bien o merecer la pena. Because we can deserve good things and bad things. I do believe that there's some semblance of karma that just comes around. And either puts a foot up our ass, or just calmly grips us, and gives us a hug, and says good job. So, that can be merecido, that can be deserved, lo bueno right? Good or the bad, it's, it's really both. And really the big thing to do with merecer is to say it out loud, merezco, blank, whatever you, you deserve, and continue to work for that.
And if you share these values of deserving to understand and communicate and to be understood, definitely check out my monthly program, Deseo, at DeseoSpanishProgram.info. Y también, check out show notes, transcript, or request a word at Aprovechar.me. Until next time, un abrazo fuerte. Gracias otra vez, and thank you so much for coming along with me on this ride to Una Palabra Sola. Be sure to check out the show notes for additional worksheets and materials. If you have a word that you would like me to review, please feel free to let me know at approvecharlanguagesolutions.com. Hasta la próxima vez, until next time.