Going Through a Prepositional Phase . . .

It's not like I think about the parts of speech all the time, even though I seem to find myself returning to certain nouns and verbs an awful lot.  But I am a nerd of the word, so it makes sense that, on occasion, I let loose my nerdy little brain and ponder the parts a bit.

What's odd is the part of speech I've been considering of late.  Nothing impressive like a proper noun, or scandalous like an irregular verb.  No, my mind has been on prepositions, without which I couldn't have written this sentence.

The tiniest slice of grammatical life, never one to draw attention to itself, the unpresuming preposition, nonetheless, kills in the soft-skills arena.  That's because a preposition is all about relationships.  Its sole job is to inform us of how things interact.  Or don't.  As my friend Julie Schonewise once told me when I was trying to figure out how the heck to teach them to my Freshman English class, it's prepositions that determine what we might do with that garbage can in the middle of the room.

Considering their relational importance, then, I'd argue that our choice of prepositions deserves as much forethought as the adjectives and adverbs we use, even if they are less fun to say.  And, to the observant bystander, we need to realize that the prepositions we choose can say quite a bit about who and what we are in this world.

Are you just passing through or do you plan on staying over for a bit?

If you see a stranger struggling, are you apt to walk by or walk to him?

Do you judge a book by its cover or by what you find between the covers?

Just adding a preposition to a sentence can change everything, as well.  Consider Finn and our daily outings.  When I walk Finn, I'm fulfilling a duty.  When I walk with Finn, though, I'm much more open to my surroundings.  That tiny preposition pre positions me to have a richer experience, to be more present.

Pre-positioning.  Maybe that's the way we should think about prepositions.  Where is it we want to be in the world--what part do we want to play with the people and things we encounter each day?  If we seek to know more of the world, then we should choose prepositions that allow us to interact with it more.  And if something seems particularly poisonous to us, we can use our prepositions to put some space between the two of us.

Small but mighty, it's the prepositions in our lives that often determine how rich those lives will be.