Take vs. Have

It's interesting, I think, that there are some things that we have by default, other things we have to take, and a few things can go either way.

For instance,

Patience is a good example of something we start out having.  It's like in video games, you have a life meter; as things happen that are irksome or frustrating, the patience level decreases, until you don't have any.

Naps, however, are things we must take in order to have them.  We start with no nap, then we take it and we have it after that.  Or had it, I guess.

The most intriguing part is what this shows about how we think about different things.  Those in the Have category are modified or altered passively.  By that I mean, we tend to outsource the responsibility of those things.  In the case of patience, we don't generally decide when something happens, "Oh, wow, that was rather frustrating; I think my patience just lost 10 points."  No, instead, we lose our patience.  In the Take category, on the other hand, we tend to assume that we aren't going to get it any other way.  If we don't take it, we'll never have it.  This is often true, although it is somewhat pessimistic.

This raises the question of time.  Where does it fit?  There is an unlimited supply, but we only have so much warehouse space (our warehouses being plans, goals, hopes, and dreams), so it's a finite quantity for each individual, y'know?  For most of us, I think it's generally a Have commodity.  I don't believe it should be, though, because what we do is our choice.  We need to take time to do things, because it will most likely not fall in our laps.

The word of the day today is intriguing /ĭn·trēg'·ĭŋ/.  I like it because it has three Is (responsibility does, too, and the echo of the B's vertical line in the L is pretty cool, but intriguing is both more useful and more fun).  It's intrigu- + -ing: intrigu- <= intricare = Latin for "to entangle" (also the root of intricate); -ing = the gerund indicator.

Wow, this post got a ton longer than I had expected it to be.