“Meta”!

The four letter word, a curious case that it seems, have a way with words. Appears to be a detached word, yet it defines existence.

My search for the word began with a few spam mails that had used ‘meta’, repeatedly. Surprisingly, online Merriam-Webster dictionary returned the definition “as river over 620 miles (995 kilometers) NE Colombia flowing into the Orinoco on Venezuela-Colombia boundary”.

While ‘meta’ prefixed words explain the situation as what goes “after” or “beyond” mostly, philosophy accepted the ‘meta’ reality as existence. Well, another dictionary explains it as a term “used to characterise something that is characteristically self-referential,” and is of relevance in art.

A friend, who has been in the field of content writing and marketing, explained it as a means to help you rank your pages in the search engine. “Basically it is the description about the page”. A well described page or content will reflect in every search.

Following the rules of content writing, careful repetition of keywords becomes a habit. A little help and some understanding of the technique, may lead to a page’s success on the search engine.

My passing thoughts seem to be getting jumbled in the process. Meta may be “about” and “beyond”. It may have references in being competitive as well as in human emotions. But isn’t it all about the struggle for existence? Aren’t we “meta” in our day to day living? I wonder.