Years ago someone posted on LinkedIn about meaningful learning.
I stopped at the word. I genuinely wanted to know why meaningful had to be added. Adding meaningful either said something redundant or revealed something the speaker needed but could not name directly.
The Council named what was actually happening: when a word loses enough meaning through overuse, more words get added as a way of reclaiming it. Meaningful learning. Genuine accountability. Real connection. Each modifier is an attempt to restore the weight the original word has lost. But the modifier also appoints the speaker as judge, jury, and executioner of what the word now means.
When a Word Covers Everything
A few days ago someone posted: Can we please stop overusing the words narcissist and gaslighting? Not every asshole is a narcissist. Not every cheater is gaslighting you. When a word covers everything, it protects nothing.
I responded: the actual victims of the thing the word was pointing at lose the very language that should have given their experience weight. She said exactly. The word becomes the performance of understanding rather than the understanding itself.
Pixie Dust
Someone I know kept making promises. I assumed they were made to me. They broke them consistently. At some point I asked: why do you make promises? They said: to hold myself accountable.
The follow-up question I did not ask: accountable to whom?
I was the audience, not the recipient. The words were never traveling toward me. My expectation was real. Their intention was real. Neither was wrong. But they were not the same thing. Words that do not land where the receiver expects them dissolve on contact. Pixie dust. Not false, but weightless in my hands because I had been holding them differently from the moment they were spoken.
Three words would have collapsed the entire misunderstanding: accountable to whom?
The Word I Use Most Confidently
The Council asked: which word do I use most confidently that might be doing work I have not examined lately? The answer was immediate. Accountability.
The enterprise version is managed accountability. It points outward. The review process is the accountability. The documentation is the accountability. The version I built Trinity around is resolved accountability: what did I say I would do, and did I do it, and what is the honest answer when no one is watching?
When I use accountability on the Pertinent website, I am using the enterprise version. When I use it in my own practice, I mean the second thing. The word is the same. The thing it is pointing at is not. That split is either honest context-sensitivity or it is the I having a financial stake in keeping the word soft. I am sitting with which one is more accurate.