There’s a symbol out there that’s gone through various versions of itself and refuses to become irrelevant. Perhaps there’s something to learn from something as simple as a symbol we use everyday.
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Welcome to A Musing, I’m Diego.
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Today’s episode, Octothorpe.
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Growing up, I was used to seeing this symbol on our phone keypad.
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This wasn’t a key I found myself using too often, but once in a while, I did.
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Back then, we all knew it as the pound sign, or the number sign.
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Nowadays, it’s been christened by social media as the hashtag.
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But that little symbol was originally known by a different name, the Octothorpe.
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I know, try to use that word in a conversation today, triple dare you.
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Now, the origin of the name Octothorpe is a bit debatable.
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Octo means eight, and that refers to the number of line ends in the shape.
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However, Thorpe can refer to either a hamlet or a village, according to the dictionary, or to Jim Thorpe, a famous Olympic athlete.
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But regardless of the origin, Octothorpe was the first name the symbol had.
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Later on, the symbol would come to be known as the pound sign, the hex sign, the square, the cross, the common sign, the space sign, and of course, in our modern times, the hashtag.
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The use of the symbol began sometime around the 14th century with the introduction of the Latin abbreviation LB for the Roman term Libra Pondo or pound weight.
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And it actually had never occurred to me that the pound sign had to do with actual weight until I saw my manager at a metal distributor that I worked for years back using it next to numbers in these quick notes he used to take.
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I had no clue why he was hashtagging numbers on paper, so of course I asked.
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And he explained it and schooled me.
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And it makes perfect sense why that symbol was known as the pound sign.
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What we do know is that a guy named Chris Messina was the first to use that symbol to group topics on Twitter.
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And Twitter was the first social media platform to make anything preceded by the symbol into a clickable link that would lead you to a feed of other posts using that same keyword.
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Soon Instagram and Facebook would of course follow suit.
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Now you may be asking yourself, what type of lesson or pearl of wisdom could we possibly take from the Octothorpe?
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Although I geek out over the history of the symbol, the most important aspect of the story of the Octothorpe is how it’s managed to survive and stay relevant for ages.
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Everywhere from people working at a wholesale metal distributor, to keys on a dial phone, to tags for keywords when you go on a tweet storm.
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What’s allowed the symbol to survive and thrive is reinvention.
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In the three uses that I just described for the Octothorpe, the symbol represents very different things and it fulfills very different needs.
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And yet it works.
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Reinvention has meant survival and evolution for those simple little crossed lines.
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And for that reinvention to happen, someone had to break with convention.
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Someone had to say, to hell with it, let’s go this new route.
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Someone had to take things in a new direction.
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And if the Octothorpe could do it, so can you.
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Have you ever hit one of those seasons in your life where things feel dry?
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When you’ve reached a lull in your life and nothing exciting seems anywhere near in your horizon, you ever get the sensation like you’re trudging through peanut butter?
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I know, weird visual, but imagine that sensation and what it would be like, trying to traverse a distance in peanut butter up to your waist.
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You can feel that, right?
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That’s a feeling I had during a season of my life.
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I knew that things weren’t headed in a positive, vibrant direction.
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Everything around me felt stale.
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And believe me, I was busy during that time period.
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But it all still felt so slow.
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Soon I realized the feeling was due to the fact that I was dragging a lot of ideas, mindsets, relationships and routines that I no longer felt connected to, that I no longer felt added to my life, but rather depleted my life of energy and purpose and expectation.
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And man, that last one, expectation is so important.
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When you reach a point in life where you lose the expectation of what’s to come, that’s when you know it’s time for a change.
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That’s when it’s time for the pound sign to become the hashtag.
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I know that a shift in direction can be a terrifying thing.
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Believe me, I know firsthand.
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That trudging I was feeling in my life was something I was no longer willing to put up with.
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I needed to heed the warnings of my heart and mind that they were yelling at me from the inside.
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Family wouldn’t understand.
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My then-wife wouldn’t understand.
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Those I called friends would judge me.
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The community I belonged to would shun me.
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All of these things happened.
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But I needed to make changes in my life and in myself that were going to be hard, yes, but that in time would lead me to become the most genuine and sincere version of myself I’ve ever been.
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And along with that feeling of being my most genuine self, that sense of expectation returned to my life.
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Try this if you feel that sensation of trudging in your own life, and your inner voice is screaming out for change.
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Break with the conventions in your life.
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Be bold and say to hell with it, I’m going in a new route.
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Take your life in a new direction if you need to.
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It’s your life to explore and to navigate until you’ve arrived at a place of contentment and peace.
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Don’t settle.
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Now, this is a tricky gray area here.
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You should not deliberately cause harm to somebody by the change that you’re making in your life.
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You should not abandon a dependent.
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You shouldn’t forsake your responsibilities overnight.
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That is not what we’re talking about here.
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But it’s also important to realize that it’s not your job to please another human being at the expense of your own peace and joy.
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And if someone who claims to love you is forcing you to settle, perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate the sway and influence that that individual should have in your life.
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We grant power to the people in our lives by choosing to go with their flow, but that current that they’re following isn’t always in our best interest.
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Don’t let the shackles of fear keep you from discovering a better version of yourself and your life.
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Don’t fear reinventing yourself.
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Life isn’t a prison sentence.
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It’s a journey.
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The moment you feel like you have nothing left to grow or evolve in, that’s when the journey ends and the trudging begins.
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So if you need to, go the way of the Octothorpe.
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Rediscover yourself to the fullest.
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Let me know how that goes for you.
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You can write me at contactamusing at gmail.com.
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You can find A Musing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher and anywhere else who find podcasts.
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Make sure you subscribe and follow so you don’t miss the next episode.
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And please share this message with someone who needs to hear it in your life.
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I’ll catch you in the next episode.