Read this on galpod.com.
Right. It's been a long summer holiday. But today the kids are back in school which means now I have time to do all the things I said I'd do all summer. Only, like always, I said I'd do too many things "after the holidays". I started nice and easy with an hour of writing (I'm working on a short story I'm actually kind of excited about). Same with the blog: I'll leave the more philosophical posts to later on when I get back into the groove. So for now, here's a random word trail that's been sitting in my open tabs for a couple of weeks now.
It started when someone asked me how to spell apparently. I used to get it mixed up until I realised it's like "parent" but with "ap" at the beginning. So this got me thinking. Is there a connection between parenting and apparently? Well, apparently there is.
A parent is, of course, someone who "brings forth" an offspring. It has Indo-European roots, which means that the root is similar in Sanskrit and Greek, which I think is very cool. It comes from the root parēre, a word with two meanings: 1) to watch and 2) to protect. The word apparent comes, of course, from the first meaning of that root: appareo means to be visible.
I like that a lot. I like that being a parent means to protect, but also to watch. I think as parents this is all we have to do: to protect our kids, and watch them as they grow into their own people.
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