Bye.

This post marks the official launch of the all-new VeeBJamN Network.  But, as Semisonic observed, "every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."  And so, it seems only appropriate to open by pondering an idea that is usually brought to light as things end:

Bye.

 I once heard that there is a language (I can't remember which one) with no word for "goodbye".  I didn't question that fact nearly enough at the time.  According to the mysterious source of this information, the speakers of that language said things such as "see you later" rather than "goodbye", based on a belief that "goodbye" suggests a break in the relationship.  An end.

Here's why I say that I didn't question the fact nearly enough:

What does "goodbye" even mean?

For whatever reason, that question never occurred to me until after I had already learned the meaning.

One of the many new beginnings around me is the start of a new Sunday school year.  My Sunday school class has a new teacher and a new framework.  This year, we are using a method called the Faith Five.  The idea being that there are five things we are doing whenever we meet:  share, read, talk, pray, bless.  We used the Faith Five one week and forgot the last of the five:  bless.

As I was discussing the fact that we skipped that, it occurred to me that blessing is not really something that we do normally in our society.  Aside from saying "bless you" after people sneeze and the occasional long-winded, dramatic, and stylized blessings we offer in a religious setting, I can't really think of any times that we actually bless each other.  I was apparently not the only one who thought of this, either.  I talked to our teacher (who also happens to be my mom and our pastor) about it, and she came to class with a rather simple and elegant solution:  goodbye.

Thus, I turn back to the question at hand:  What does "goodbye" mean?

Apparently the etymology of "goodbye" begins with the rather simple blessing "God be with you".  When it began, it was said in another time where they would have actually said "God be with ye" which was eventually contracted to "godbwye" (which I have no idea how to pronounce).  Then, thanks to the standard greetings such as "good morning", "good evening", etc., it became "goodbye".

So, in effect, whenever you say "goodbye", you are blessing the person you are speaking to.  Going even another step further, since the word "bye" is a further contraction of "goodbye", even when you just say "bye", you are offering someone a blessing.  (Insert mind-explosion sound effect here.)

With all this in mind, let's turn back to the alleged language without a word for "goodbye".  One of the alternatives that these people supposedly used instead of saying "goodbye" was "God be with you" . . . you know, "goodbye".  Instead of saying "goodbye" they said "goodbye".  That, of course, makes perfect sense.

There are several morals to this story:

1. Blessings are not as strange and uncommon as we may think, because every time you say "bye" you are blessing someone.
2. People say things that don't make sense, and if you don't question them, they'll continue to get away with pure falsities that don't actually makes sense once you truly understand them.
3. If you click on links on Facebook, you may end up reading an unnecessarily in-depth article about a three-letter word.

Bye.