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I set out on the walking path as usual this morning. At the end of the path there is a large commercial property. Most days I pick up a few extra miles by circling the lot twice before reversing for home. Lately, I have encountered a maintenance worker there on my first pass around the lot. The maintenance worker is an older gentleman. His build is so slight that his baseball cap alone seems to overwhelm his small frame. He pushes a cart full of brooms and shovels, sprays and rags while pulling a vacuum cleaner behind him. This busy man is not much taller than the cart he maneuvers around this giant property. Most days I greet him with a smile and a simple hello. Some days I compliment him on the way he keeps the property looking so lovely. This morning as I came around a bend in the sidewalk I saw the maintenance worker taking a break at a picnic table inside a small pavilion. He turned to me and said, “There’s my little lady.” I laughed and said, “I think God intended for us to meet. I’m Lilli.” Smiling broadly, he extended his hand to me, “Jesse.” The encounter was pleasant and brief, but as I walked on I could not ignore the strength that came from his hand. Had we stood side-by-side, no one would have doubted that I was the sturdier one of this pair, and yet the strength there in his hand… And that feeling of strength remained upon my palm and at the base of my thumb for much of the day. Ironically, the right hand I offered to Jesse is a hand weakened from radiation following breast cancer treatment. It started with a fibrosis in my shoulder and the nerve pain inched its way down my arm into my hand. I first noticed the pain and the weakness as I struggled to lift a small pot of boiling water from the stove. But here, after this brief encounter, I felt a renewed if not unusual strength in my right hand. I know that it has become cliché to say that people and things are not always what they seem or that looks can be deceiving, but the strength in Jesse’s hand was a needed reminder for me. We make big judgments about people based on a glance, but most people have unseen strengths earned through hardship, work, and even the ordinary demands of daily living. I study my weakened hand and feel Jesse’s strength upon it, a strength that was given freely and generously in response to nothing more than a smile and a kind word or two, and I wonder: can it really be that easy? Share your strength with someone today.
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 The votes are in, and there is no doubt in my mind that we have a legitimate winner. The best word won! And in my book, it is the best invention since deodorant. It is just too good to keep to myself. Earlier this week, in a “eureka!” moment I clicked on the link supplied by a friend who is also a lover of words, a thinker, and a seeker. Being from the school of If You Can Name It, You Can Tame It, I am thrilled to have a name for the disease that has overtaken society and an answer to my incessant question, “What the hell just happened?” I feel like a scientist who has spent a lifetime looking down into a microscope or up into the sky and who suddenly arrives at a cosmic breakthrough. What I don’t understand is how this has stayed so quiet. Why hasn’t the inventor rocketed to fame? Applause please for Cory Doctorow and the American Dialect Society word of the year: enshittification. I am no John Maynard Keynes or Milton Friedman, but my take on economics is that unchecked capitalism moves toward greed and corruption. There are no “free markets” where supply is created by demand. The suppliers psychologically and physically manipulate us into “demanding” their products and services. This is why we need government—to keep us all socially responsible, but enough about online platforms and the state of the economy and American politics. I am bringing this new word of the year into common use to include anything that once was good but has been degraded by negative social forces. Like a kid who just learned the power of dirty words, I find opportunities everywhere to use my new vocabulary. Scrabble anyone? My children will be pleased to know that I am finally replacing the F word in my daily speech, something else that has gone to ruin as I age in this time of general degradation. If you knew me in the past, you might think I am a prisoner of war making coerced statements, but no, it’s really me, another case of the rot done by technology. Enshittification. Say it once more with feeling! We know what we’ve got. Or what’s got us. Get out some hand sanitizer. Put on some gloves. Let’s clean up this mess! |
AuthorLilli-ann Buffin Archives
February 2026
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