Magic Words

Words are magic. Words are our thoughts, feelings and ideas encoded in sight and sound. Without them, communication would be a hell of a lot more difficult. We would still be painting on the walls of our caves to tell our stories, to remember and to be remembered. Like most magic, words are so ubiquitous we often take them for granted these days. But words hold power. Strung together like sacred beads and spoken as mantra and prayer into the Universe, they shape the worlds in which we dwell. They are what we use to not only tell the stories of who we are and what happens to us—they also empower us to speak story into truth.

So we must be mindful when we speak of “the new normal” during these “uncertain” and “unprecedented” times of the coronavirus. When these phrases first started tumbling out the mouths of friends and coworkers a few weeks ago, I found myself resisting a deep, visceral urge to recoil from the very sound of them. I wasn’t even processing what people might have meant by them. I don’t think the people speaking them had either. I think people were just feeling very afraid and very vulnerable against this thing our naked eyes couldn’t see. Now, as people have had time to sit with the circumstances we share, I may gently ask what they mean by “the new normal”—what they would like about this to carry into their vision of the future. Or in response to uncertain times, I may wonder aloud whether they truly feel uncertainty. Or is it fear? It is okay to feel fear so long as we don’t become it. I ask them to tell me their story, encourage them to use their own words to describe their emotions.

For one thing, it’s a bizarre phenomenon to wake up one day and find everyone has been infected with the same soundbytes. It evidences a subtle but invasive hijack of our mindfulness and a lapse in our self-awareness when this happens, because it takes no genius to figure out where these viral phrases come from—the media. The problem here isn’t so deep as some conspiracy to brainwash us, no. The issue is that the media (at least in the United States) is concerned with telling its own stories. (And what bigger story could there be than a motherfucking pandemic? Except you can’t say “motherfucking” in mixed company, so…yeah…) The media also wants to tell you its stories in ways that captivate the fleeting attention spans of Americans it has helped to cultivate for the last handful of decades.

All of this happens under the guise of keeping you informed. Most people want to be informed, because knowledge is power and all that jazz. But most of us don’t know the difference between information and data, much less data and editorial. We tend to think that the more you know, the better off you are; and under that mindset, all data is information. The average American doesn’t typically give a shit about this until the data makes them an outlier of something they want to share or be part of. Or, if you happen to enjoy being weirdo as I do, said data whitewashes you until you are no longer an individual. Being lumped in with Generation X and being someone who meditates too damn much places me in the latter category.

Big Media also smacked the “apathetic” label on my generation in addition to the Generation X moniker; because we questioned the hype, rejected the soundbytes, and learned to invest our attention in things that mattered to us. These things, incidentally, were often different from or in direct opposition to what mattered to our predecessors. The stories the media told about us then became about how we didn’t care about anyone or anything—including ourselves—about how we were these shells of lost human souls, devoid of heart and hope, bumping around this, our great and stately nation.

In my early teens, this pissed me off so much I wrote a novel on the subject (because, you know, that’s what heartless soulless denizens of the teenage wastes do). I felt like someone was lying to me about me, especially when the news would tell stories about young black men. Back then (as it still does sometimes) “black” was the media’s shorthand for a dark-skinned belligerent savage with hostile intentions, even more hostile tendencies, and superhuman powers fueled by PCP. Obviously, none of the newspeople telling these stories had met me. No one asked me, a young black man (most of the time). It made me red in mind.

As I’ve cultivated patience with my fellow humans, however, the most I experience nowadays is a twinge of pity for the spinners of such fiction. Usually, it’s when I hear some talking head declare that X percent of Americans prefers or thinks or feels or does this or that. “Nobody asked me! Did they as you?” I often ask my partner, Allen, in the same sing-song tone as Magenta at the end of Rocky Horror Picture Show, just after Riff-Raff zaps Dr. Frankenfurter and Rocky dead:

“But I thought you liked them!” she says, “They liked you.”

Being a better sport about the industrial-strength story machine that is the American media is also one of the fruits of meditation. Meditation helps me to remain grounded and patient, yes; but it has also taught me to value and control my attention. It has cultivated my awareness of how people pay, seek and use attention. And not always for the better. It has taught me to first seek to pay attention, not to gain attention (which is part of the reason for my backing off online media these past couple of years). Our attention is a gift, and how little or in what ways we render it are ours to control. We control it by way of focus, which—like attention—is a skill we can build.

Moreover, meditation nurtures the Observer part of us. The Observer is the wisest and most evolved part of us, the opposite of the reptile brain that crawls about on its belly and drives the behaviors of most people most of the time. The reptile brain moves on ancient and outdated instincts, launching us into fight, flight or freeze whenever the air tastes a little different than usual or when the wind warms from the north or cools from the south instead of the other way around.

The Observer is the side of us that allows us to take part in this world without being swept up in it.The Observer is also where the power of our words originates. It helps us to use our words and other methods of communication to express the things it witnesses from beneath of the still waters at the seat of our soul. When our stories get off-track, this is the part of us that lets us know something is off in the narrative. It leads us to retreat, regroup and revise. From this, inspiration for new chapters of self-discovery or revised editions of the past spring forth. In V for Vendetta, Valerie, the character who inspires V to become who and what he is, is compelled to tell her story and does so by writing it on toilet paper.

This is the Observer.

She can never be taken from us or silenced, although many of us spend a great deal of time estranged from her in some form or fashion.

Distraction is the number one cause of death in this world. It takes us away from our dreams, leads us to lead others away from theirs. It separates us from what is essential to who we are and why we are here in this moment. Whether you die from a heart attack, from texting while driving, or from COVID-19, distraction is somewhere there in the mix, even if it is only in those last moments, where every regret—everything you wanted to do but will now leave undone—flashes before your eyes. The thing that stops us from doing the things that are essential—the things that are us—is distraction. We run to distraction to try to escape our Observer. If we are lucky, running from it one way only leads us to it in another.

When you start adopting other people’s language to describe your own experience, it is a form of distraction. We do this when we don’t know the words for what we feel or when we want to deny those feelings—particularly when we harbor vulnerability or shame. Using other people’s words give us other words to call them—words that don’t feel so close, so personal. But by doing so, we put words in the mouth of the Observer, gag it with others’ ideas. And when you do that, you undercut your own thoughts, feelings, experiences and, most importantly, resilience.

It is okay to have no words that describe how you feel or think for now. It is okay not to be okay. Each of us has things, believe it or not, that live inside us that will defy words, that we may never find the words to give shape and dimension to for as long as we live. And that’s okay too. But I urge you to consider—strongly and deeply—before you adopt the words of another to speak your own experiences. It is one thing if these words resonate with the deep, wise part of you. But it’s quite another if someone’s words are mere placeholders for thoughts and feelings you’ve yet to discover or, worse, labels you give uncomfortable feelings you would rather not wrestle down and name for yourself.

Those who say we live in unprecedented and uncertain times have obviously lived sheltered and privileged lives. They obviously do not perceive the myriad other dangers that exist on this side of the flesh, dangers that could have very easily erased us before we even began—hazards that have annihilated generations of our ancestors. The odds of you and I being alive right here, right now are infinitesimal, by some calculations. Our presence is a miracle and a blessing. Moreover, our science and technology are advanced enough that we have a more accurate idea of what is happening with this outbreak than we did back in the days when even smart people called HIV “the Gay Cancer.” Before the Internet, quarantine would have meant isolation the likes of which few of us can imagine these days. And while a few lucky people might have known about the coronavirus, it certainly wouldn’t have been common to the masses as it is today. This and other reasons upon reasons make me feel gratitude.

Those who describe today as “the new normal” aren’t giving themselves or anyone else credit, much less time to do what life does—adapt. They want to hurry up and put routines in place so that people can get back to being productive in the same ways and for the same reasons they were before the outbreak. Our brains love the familiar and the routine, so buying into this idea of normalcy appeals to most of us on a primal level. But as we adjust (and, believe me, we will), that topsy-turvy, the-sky-is-falling feeling will subside. That Observer part of our mind simultaneously guides us across the chasm and waits for us on the other side.

To get to that place of peace, we’ll need that Observer part of us. It will tell us what is essential to who we are so that we can be that person—just more. It will reveal where and how we have spent our attention and empower us to redirect our focus to the things that matter. In our isolation, it will help us to discover the substance of who we are and the common threads that bind us.

It’s not uncertainty. It’s opportunity.

So if you want to get through this:

• Maintain social distance.

• Wash your motherfucking hands.

• Keep your motherfucking hands away from your motherfucking face.

• Stay the fuck home.

It all comes down to being mindful of what you spread. And it ain’t just disease. It may, indeed, be the whole point of this exercise: Our words are wonders and weapons. Choose which for yourself; choose your words for yourself.

And speak your words wisely, for whatever you speak you spread.