Photo by Vetrivel Viswanathar on Unsplash
I’m a Canadian. If you’ve met one, you know that we have an intimate and sometimes frustrating relationship with the word please.
Please had its humble beginnings as the Latin placere, meaning “to be acceptable, liked, or approved.” In a move that would make Darwin proud, it evolved into the French word plaisir, meaning pleasure. If you know anything about the French, this definition makes complete sense. It was stolen under the cover of night to appear in Middle English as the new and improved plesen, which translated closely to satisfy or be agreeable (cough, cough, Canadian foreshadowing). It finally got its true, standalone identity as please in the 1620s.
In the day-to-day life of a Canadian, please can mean any or all of the following:
A polite way to interrupt: Excuse me, please, but I think you dropped your medicine ball.
The highly effective please/sorry combo: Can I squeeze by you please? Sorry!
A sarcastic response: Oh, please.
The spouse whisper at the door when you’ve been saying goodbye for 45 minutes: Please, for the love of God, put your shoes on.
The passive-aggressive theft deterrent: Can you please stop stealing my his-and-hers garden gnomes!
It feels like we have full user rights to please like no other culture. In my thousands of unconscious interactions with the word, I realized that I’ve never really thought of please as a prayer.
When my best friend died of an overdose, please was the first thought that I could find. That and help were the only words that I spoke.
When I was released from a 72-hour hold, they returned the cheap black belt that seemed so important for me to get back. A belt that didn't even hold up my pants. She laid it on the counter with my shoes and wallet. My body chewed through the joy and relief to land right back in the place of nothing being any different. I didn’t understand at that time that please was the only complete prayer that was reachable.
Please will mostly come out of me like an unconscious breath.
Move the shopping cart that you left in the middle of the aisle.
Put your coat on.
Pass the salt.
Just for this minute though, maybe it can mean:
Please ease their suffering.
Please give me the courage to…
Please let me lead with an open heart.
Please.
I like the humility that “please” can help us embody.
I love this post, Peter!! What will stay with me, even more than the many ways we use “please” in our lives, is “please” as a prayer. I can’t count how many times “please” came into my nightly prayers when my spouse was on a ventilator during the early days of the COVID pandemic. Thank you for the reminder of “please” as a way of asking for something meaningful. 🙏