Three, Two, One, Four

There is something special about three letter words.   Especially when you compare them to four letter words.  Check this out:   God, Art, Mom, Dad, Sun, try, die, cry, fly, him, her, see, pee, sex, hex, eat, Zen, fun.

When you add another letter to a three letter word it turns to shit, literally, or at least a bunch of c-r-a-p.  Sex turns to fuck.  God turns to hell.   Or at least "evil."   Sun turns to moon.  Try turns to fail.  Her turns to them.  Two turns to four.  Our turns to mine.   Why turns to know.   Way turns to pray.  You get the idea?

I'm not sure why three letter words are so special.  Perhaps it has something to do with economies of scale.  But its not just a matter of reducing the number of letters involved.    If you further reduce a three letter word to a two letter word, it just gets too metaphysical:  Am, me, my, be--I mean really, what the hell does all that mean?  Be? Me?   I think that a two letter word needs that additional letter of the tripod to give it some grounding.   To turn the "me' into the "all."  To turn the "is" into the "now."

Even worse, if you reduce a three letter word to a one letter word, you end up with solipsism.   And that's a very lonely place to be.  For the "I" is the ultimate root of all suffering.   And the old Cartesian quip about "I think, therefore I am"  has to be truly one of the most lonely and delusional notions of all time.

So in my universe, take that back "our" universe, three is truly a magic number.   From Schoolhouse rock to De La Soul all the way to Lithuania.   We are all 3 feet high, and rising:-)