“Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek headed men, and such as sleep o’ nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous,” Julius Caeser.
Do we rack our brains? OR Do we crack them? Many a time (NOT: Many a times NOR: Many atimes), one has to think very hard to find an answer to a problem; one has to strain mentally to recall or to understand something. When one does such a thing, the usual expression is: ‘… rack his or her brains’.
The ‘rack’ was a medieval torture device on which the victim was tied horizontally with his/her arms and legs being torn from their bodies.
‘Rack’ used as a verb means ‘to cause pain’. William Beveridge, in his Twenty-Six Sermons (about 1680) writes: “They rack their brains … they hazard their lives for it”. To ‘rack’ means ‘to hurt severely’, e.g. A toothache racked my jaw OR ‘to afflict (a person) with severe physical, mental or emotional pain’, e.g. The coughing spasms racked his body OR ‘to stretch/extend, especially beyond normal capacity’, e.g. to rack one’s brains; to rack one’s memory; to rack one’s wit: I racked my brains over the question whose answer I could hardly find ; I racked my memory trying to think where I had seen him before; I racked my wit in trying to seek a solution to the problem.
The principal parts of ‘to rack’ are: racks, racking, racked, shall/ will rack. ‘Rack’ can be useful in many phrases; When somebody is on the rack, he is experiencing great mental anguish. To rack up is to accumulate something, usually points: the company racked up sales of GH¢500, 000 profits in its first year of trading. A ‘rack’ (noun) is a framework for holding things, e.g. the rack in a bus or a train OR a shoe-rack for holding shoes. In agriculture, we have a feed-holding rack which is a framework containing hay and fodder.
To ‘crack’ is to break; to fracture or hit hard with an object OR to damage OR to break with pain or grief, e.g. The death of Jordan Anagblah cracked the hearts of many footballers. When your voice is ‘cracked’, it becomes hoarse or suffers from uncontrollable changes in pitch, especially because of emotion or stress. One can crack (tell) a joke or crack (solve) a puzzle. A government may decide to crack down smuggling. When this is done, there will have been a crackdown of smuggling. NOTE: to crack down (verb-separate); crackdown (noun-combined). When you have a fair crack of the whip, you have an equal chance (of winning), fair treatment. The ‘crack of doom’ is the moment when the world ends and God’s final judgment (the Last Judgment) begins. When people paper over the cracks, they try to hide the fact that something is wrong and pretend that everything is all right. A ‘crack’ is an expert, with excellent ideas on a topic; trained to a high degree of efficiency.
The crack purified form of cocaine (simply called ‘crack’) is an extremely addictive form of cocaine. Initially, on being consumed, ‘crack’ helps to increase the dopamine levels and stimulate the neurons, thereby creating a continuous sensation of euphoria or exhilaration.
But the side effects can be very devastating. The pupils (of the eye) dilate; then the blood pressure, the heart rate and the body temperature would rise. The user may subsequently feel anxious, irritable and restless. When taken in large doses, ‘crack’ can make the user excessively aggressive; he or she becomes paranoid and delusional. ‘Crack’ can also cause abdominal pains, loss of appetite (so that without food the victim becomes thin). The user may also suffer nausea. The use of ‘crack’ can lead to heart attack, respiratory failure, seizure or stroke. The sheer addictiveness of ‘crack’ leads to loss of control over cravings for more.
The common phrase “…go to wrack and ruin” is sometimes written as “…go to rack and ruin.” But the former is preferable to the latter. The phrase means “…fall into a state of decay or destruction”. This column has devoted a paragraph on the use or abuse of ‘crack’, that is, cocaine, because it could lead to wrack and ruin. What do students write to become when they write on the topic: My Future Career? Some would like to become pilots; some would want to become doctors; to become engineers; to become lawyers; to become electrical engineers; to become lecturers; to become what and what-very noble and lofty ideas, grand and grandiose aspirations, sublime and supercilious dreams. In the Epilogue of his autobiography: ‘The Audacity of Hope’, Barack Obama, the President of the United States of America, writes: “…I am getting to an age where I have a sense of what satisfies me, and although I am perhaps more tolerant of compromise on the issues than my friend was, I know that my satisfaction is not to be found in the glare of television cameras or the applause of the crowd. Instead, it seems to come more often now from knowing that in some demonstrable way I’ve been able to help people live their lives with some measure of dignity. I think about what Benjamin Franklin wrote to his mother, explaining why he had devoted so much of his time to public service: “I would rather have it said, ‘He lived usefully, than, He died rich.’ That’s what satisfies me now, I think being useful to my family and the people who elected me, leaving behind a legacy that will make our children’s lives more hopeful than our own”. What are your aspirations, dear reader? Rack your brains and reflect on this question.
africanusoa@gmail.com
By Africanus Owusu-Ansah
