I can’t recall a time when words were so obsessed over as they are right now. The social media age brought us the freedom to say anything; and say anything is exactly what humanity did. The good the bad and the ugly. The hateful and the beautiful. Inspiring, horrifying, offensive and uplifting all merged in a fire hose of words demanding your constant attention. Did we not expect that some people would be hateful? Did we expect to hear only what we wanted to hear? Only what we agree with?
It has three negative effects: (1) your conversations are now everyone’s business, (2) people are caging themselves into narrow word-based identities and (3) there is a widespread impression that words are actually important.
The irony that I am using words to express this is not lost on me. I think it’s hilarious and I am laughing at myself already. But here we go.
When you go out to a restaurant with your friends, you are in a public place but there are unstated boundaries between your table’s conversation and other people’s conversations. Each table enjoys its own discussion without giving any attention to the conversations going on around them in this public place. So why then do we feel like we need to comment on other people’s conversations online? They were not talking to you. Butt out, calm down and mind your own business. I can’t think of bigger waste of time than obsessing ourselves with what people SAY. Words are ultimately meaningless without action. Focus on what people actually do (for few actually do much at all) and you will save yourself a lot of grief.
If we can manage to mind our own business, there is a larger and more dangerous trend: never have I seen so many people use words to cage themselves in and separate themselves from the reality that we are all one. They spend years crafting just exactly the right set of words in just the right order to describe themselves. On the one hand, our journey of self discovery is very important. On the other hand, we grow and evolve and change continuously over the course of our lives. What a shame to bind yourself into such a narrow sense of self. While you can define yourself in this moment, you cannot possibly define yourself over a lifetime, nor can you predict how you will change through the course of your life. You are not your body. You are not your mind. You are not your politics or your name or your car. You are the eternal soul inside that seeks to experience your humanity. Stop defining yourself with words: instead of insisting that you are an XYZ, I challenge you to recognize what your soul feels like in this moment, and how it feels different from before.
By far the worst effect of this trend is that everyone thinks words are important. As if they are concrete like rocks to be thrown. Words are ephemeral and temporary. They are our own human way of attempting to express something emotional or conceptual so that someone else might share in our experience. Words are nothing more than a byproduct of humanity’s need to be understood.
If a generation wants to eliminate a word all they need to do is stop using it. It will be gone within a decade. For example, nobody says piddlydink anymore. My autocorrect doesn’t even know what it is. And yes, young ones, I acknowledge that to you a decade seems like an intolerably long time. The reality is that nothing changes quickly. That idea that we must force others to stop using certain words is futile. Did you forget human nature? We are rebellious animals. Ban a book and we will read it voraciously. Ban an action and we will openly defy you. Ban a word and we will paint it on buildings in bright orange. It’s amazing that in all of that supposedly introspective self labeling we fail to understand the most basic aspects of our own humanity: only change is constant, all change takes time, and you cannot escape your genetics.
I recommend a wild and freeing experiment: see words as the meaningless temporary wisps that they are. If you must describe yourself, describe yourself with a color, or a painting, or a bit of music. Focus your meaning and attention on action… Your own actions to be precise. And use your words to let me know how it goes đ
Love,
~KC
