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OK effortless English members welcome to the vocabulary explanation section of the Our Universal Journey article. Let’s get started with the vocabulary.

Near the beginning, you hear the word tenuous. Actually, there’s a couple of sentences here that have several words. I say a job that is always tenuous, human relationships that are fragile, unpredictable and sometimes tumultuous.

Alright tenuous, first of all, means it’s something that’s uncertain, something that could easily change, that you could lose it very easily. So, if I say my job is very tenuous it means oh I don’t have much security. I could easily lose my job. I could lose it very quickly.

Tumultuous has the idea of being very… full of conflict, full of emotion, changing all the time. Sometimes, we might describe the ocean as a tumultuous sea, a tumultuous ocean means there’s big waves, there’s a storm. We describe a relationship as tumultuous. It means that the people are always fighting and arguing and it’s always changing, so it’s tumultuous.

Alright, now you see the word fatigue in the next sentence. I say that my body is subject to disease fatigue and aging. Fatigue means basically tiredness. It means being tired over a long period of time.

So it’s not just, you know, you do some hard work and then you’re tired. It’s actually over several days or maybe months or even years. If you’re always tired we say you have fatigue or, the adjective, you say you are fatigued with an ed on the end there.

Alright, next phrase, I have a handle on it. In the sentence I say: however much we think we have a handle on it, the truth is we really never know what’s to come in life.

OK, so if we think we have a handle on it… to have a handle on something means to be in control of it, to have control over that. So if you have a handle on life, it means you have control over your life. You basically are successful at it. If you don’t have a handle on something, it means you don’t understand it, you can’t control it or you’re not successful, something like that.

Alright, in this… you see a couple times in this article the word impermanent. And impermanent is the opposite of permanent. Permanent means something never changes. It’s always true, it’s always there. If you talk about a permanent relationship, it means you’re always together.

Impermanent means quite the opposite. It means something changes all the time. It’s never the same. So life… this is kind of a definitely a Buddhist idea, impermanent life is implement, it means things always change, nothing stays the same.

Alright, in the next sentence, I use the verb persist. We persist in our attempts to control life. To persist is to keep trying. It means to continue to try to do something. It means you do not quit, you do not give up. Usually, it’s a pretty positive word actually. The verb is to persist.

So we persist in our attempts to control life. Means we keep trying to control life. We keep trying again and again. We never stop trying to control life.

And in the same part of that sentence, I you will see the verb manipulate. I say we imagine that we can predict and manipulate future events. To manipulate, uh, it’s a little more of a negative word usually. Manipulate means to try to control or affect or influence something.

You can manipulate a person for example. You try to get them to do what you want them to do. In that kind of situation, manipulate usually has a little bit of a negative meaning. It means maybe you’re lying or you’re doing something that’s not totally good or honest to change somebody, to make them do something.

So when we say, oh he manipulated me. It usually has a negative idea, that he lied to you so you would do something.

OK, but in this case, it’s more of a neutral, because we’re not talking about a person. We’re talking about manipulating events in the future and manipulating our own lives, and it has a neutral idea. But if you use it to manipulate another person, control another person, it’s negative.

Alright, catastrophic occurs in the next paragraph. I say our best laid plans, means, just, that just means our best plans, are always subject to, can always have, catastrophic failure. And then later on in the same article, a couple paragraphs later, you see the noun, catastrophe.

As the Alan Watts quotes. He says to trust yourself to react appropriately when catastrophe happens. The noun catastrophe means a total huge big failure. Catastrophe means a disaster, right? Everything goes wrong, everything fails, everything falls apart, everything is destroyed. That’s a catastrophe.

So the adjective is catastrophic. Catastrophic failure means a total failure, a disastrous failure. It means everything fails and falls apart and it’s horrible. So I’m saying that even if we have great plans, they can always have a catastrophic failure, totally fail.

Alright, in that same Alan Watts quote, he uses the phrase failure of nerve. Failure of nerve is really failure to trust yourself. Nerve has a few meanings, but in this case, nerve means courage. It means lack of fear, no fear.

So failure of nerve means you’re afraid. If you have a failure of nerve, it means you’re afraid and you don’t do something you should do. So he’s saying that if you’re afraid, if you’re afraid to do what you need to do, the real problem is you don’t trust yourself.

That fear comes from not trusting yourself and if you want to be strong and courageous and have a good life, you need to trust yourself and not worry about the outside world and outside problems.. If you trust yourself, you can handle anything.

Okay, we see the verb obsess in this article a few times, to obsess. Obsess is usually used with either over or about. You obsess over something or you obsess about something. And to obsess means to think about something again and again and again and again. In fact, you only think about this topic or this subject.

So if you obsess over external events, it means you’re always thinking about what’s happening in the outside world and that’s all you think about. You never think about inside yourself.

**So to obsess over means to think about something, it often has the idea of too much. You just keep thinking about the same thing again again again and, you know, probably too much. ** Alright, you see the, in the next page, the second page of the learning guide at the top, the verb overcome. Maybe you can overcome your problems.. To overcome means to solve a problem or to beat an opponent or someone who’s trying to… an enemy.

If you beat them, if you win against them, you overcome them. If you have a big big problem and you finally solve it, then you overcome the problem, means you go past it and no longer is bothering you.

Alright, in the next paragraph, we see the verb imply, to imply. In the sentence, it says practically this implies that our task is to seek out new experiences. Ok, to imply means to suggest. So this suggests… this information suggests to us, it tells us indirectly, not directly but indirectly not directly, it suggests that we should seek out new experiences.

A task, by the way, our task means our job. A task is a job or a project. Something you have to do. And to seek out means to find or look for.

Alright, in that same sentence, we see the word capacity. So we have to seek out new experiences and we have to build our capacity to adapt to them.

Our capacity means our potential, our possible ability to do something, ok? So it has this idea of possibility, what you can do, your potential, your possible ability, what you can possibly do. That’s capacity.

So if you build your capacity to adapt, adapt means change with a situation, right? If the situation changes, then you can change to survive. So if you build your capacity to adapt, it means you have more potential, more ability to adapt. When things change, it’s easier for you to change also. That’s building your capacity.

Alright, and then in the next paragraph, we see the phrase the common thread. This is a very common little idiom in English. I say Joseph Campbell identified the common thread running through the mythological journeys found in most cultures.

Okay a myth, myths, myths are stories usually kind of religious stories, spiritual stories. So they usually have some deeper meaning. So mythological journeys means spiritual trips, spiritual travels and there are a lot of stories in all parts of the world, all religions, about these big heroic stories.

Stories of heroes going on trips, going on a big travel, fighting against monsters and coming home. Those are mythological journeys.

And he said the common thread running through them, that’s a common phrase, common thread running through them. It means the common idea. It means even though they all… all these stories are different, they have a common idea, a similar idea.

So we use that phrase a lot. The common thread running through something. It means the common idea, the similar idea.

Alright and then I… we see the… in the last paragraph, we see the word face, but we’re using it as a verb, so it’s not the face on your head. It says sometimes, we must all face, like changing challenges, we must all face loss.

So to face something means to meet it, to encounter it, to deal with it. So if you say I must face this problem at work, it means you can’t run away from it. You have to deal with it. You have to handle it. You have to solve it somehow. You have to meet it. You can’t escape it. That’s what to face means, using it as a verb.

Alright and finally in the last sentence, we see the word universal. This is also in the title, this is the universal journey. Universal is an adjective. It means something that is true always, all the time, for everyone, in every place.

So it has this idea of something that is true always. It’s not just true for Americans or it’s not just true right now, and it’s not just true sometimes. It means it’s always true, it’s true everywhere, it’s true for every single person. So that’s universal. So this is the universal journey, means this is the universal trip, the universal travel.

It means this is a trip that everyone must take. Everyone in their life at some time must face these problems.. Everyone will experience loss. Everyone will have to face impermanent change. Everyone will have to face their own death eventually. These are universals. Everyone must face them.

Okay, that is it for today’s vocabulary podcast I guess. When you finish this, do it a few times and then move on to the mini-story, listen to the mini-story a couple times and that’s it.

If you know someone who’s learning English please tell them about effortless English. We would love to have more members.

Okay, I will see you next time. Good luck with your English learning. Bye-bye.