Joy

What’s in a word? Or, in a name?

As Juliet cries to the stars, not knowing that her Romeo is waiting and listening in the bushes beneath her balcony, at the foot of the trellis he would soon climb to her surprise and side:

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.”

I mean what is the big hang up with names, with words? A rose is a rose is a rose, whatever the word that named it so. She saw, hidden though he was, that Romeo was Romeo Montague and she was Juliet Capulet. Their families, the Montague’s and Capulet’s, were sworn enemies. They were divided by their family names and by their own, Romeo and Juliet. It was no play on words. It was tragedy at its heart, and she would change it by changing his name, if she could.

So would he. For her love, he would that name be changed:

“I take thee at thy word:

Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized;

Henceforth, I will never be Romeo.”

But, it doesn’t work that way, as they soon found. Life is words and words are life, as the Bard taught us so well. She could call him not Romeo but love, but Romeo he would still be. In their fated match, the words held true as loved enemies they left this land for another. In that paired leaving, love in its word held the two in its own embrace. Those so wrongly worded if rightly named, our Romeo and Juliet, will always be, to us, the love they so long to be renamed. The joy they lost for their wronged names lasts forever in the words, Romeo and Juliet.

It is a curious custom, our fondness for words.

Why do we find joy in tragedy, happiness in sadness?

If joy is happiness, how is it found in tragedy and unhappiness?

Why is there in great sadness, this feeling of great joy?

Can it be the antonym is also the synonym?

Happy sad and in the sad also joy?

Apparently, so. . . .

In their curious construction, words seem to be more than they say.

And that is, I think, the sad joy of Juliet and her Romeo.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose”

In its own name another word would be.

Sweet joy, in its own name, can be where sweet sadness can be found.

See the word and the word it holds and know joy and sadness both can there be found.

“O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?”

Not far in words from his sweet Juliet,

Grandpa Jim