philosophy to live by

It seems to me that most people are intimidated by philosophy. Philosophy-speak does seem to use overtly extravagant words in order to make their point. I feel like I hang out with a relatively deep crowd but when most of them start to hear things like "deeply ontological musings of a nihilist turned moralist on the zeitgeist of which we call the world" their butt cheeks clench and they try to change the subject. You could get the exact same reaction from a few engineers discussing the "electrical capacitance over-regulated by the pharraday controller in response to random atmospheric discharge." Those are only words and they won't bite you. If you really want to understand what they mean then you can crack open a dictionary and have at it or you can just gloss over what you don't understand in a philosophical text and try to regain footing in context. Words shouldn't be daunting. Words are inert forms of self-expression in a society where we must define words with other words and all impressions are subjective and so no one can really know what anyone else means when they say "I'm having a bad day." Don't write yourself off as someone that cannot understand the deep stuff. Its all just words and all it might take is a little vocabulary adjustment.