Congratulations on Waking Up! Now Go Back to Sleep

Today I would like to share a personal story, and it is one I find myself thinking about more and more in these trying times.

I used to wander aimlessly, sometimes subtly certain that I was on the right path, even as it slithered deeper into the shadowy woods where every tree looks the same and where rivers run to nowhere. If this state sounds pleasant to you, imagine the journey as solitary. If that still seems wonderful, imagine there is no one to call should you find your life in jeopardy. Imagine that this wilderness has no cell phones, no internet, and most importantly, no fellow travelers.

The solitude can be a blessing and a curse. To me, it more often seemed the latter.

Eventually, I got a knock on my door one summer evening. It was an older couple I didn’t know, and they carried only a jar of homemade jam. I joined them on the front porch in a space only partially shielded from the oppressive sun. We conversed for approximately ten minutes, after which they invited me to a group activity with young people my age. After that conversation, I didn’t know what to do. Forever the introvert, I wasn’t entirely comfortable being in a large group of people, none of whom I had ever met, but figured that the stigma of being alone had its limits.

Cautiously, I went to the activity. If I didn’t enjoy it, I told myself, there was no harm done and I could always turn down any further invitations.

It turned out to be fun. I had scarcely been there long enough to remind myself how awkward it felt before someone approached me, the socially-inept, the outcast, the marginalized. The other person in that situation likely had no idea what was really going on in my mind, or that befriending me was perhaps one of the best things anyone had ever done for me. The journey didn’t magically get easier, but it helped wash away a decade’s worth of self-doubt.

I choose to reflect on this story publicly for one reason.

In my last post, I promised a weeks-long project examining several words and phrases common in our national dialogue that I abhor. If you have not yet read my Christmas post, I invite you to go back and peruse my thoughts on the command ‘wake up.’

Now that you’re ‘awake,’ or I have your attention, I run the risk of putting you back to sleep.

As our politics have become more and more rotten, so too has our rhetoric (if by now you can’t tell how much I despise rhetoric of any kind, my approach may come as a surprise). It seems that to be a good X, you must hate Y with every fiber of your being, no matter what Y says or does. This belief is destructive to our founding fathers’ goals of bringing about a self-governing nation where all ideas are valued and encouraged.

Today, we shall discuss a millennial generation slang word that has been hijacked and turned into something negative. The term is ‘woke.’ I would implore you to not feel insulted when someone levels it as a slur against you or what you believe. That person, in my view, is simply advertising a weak mind where logic is treated as the enemy to mask any shortcoming he or she endures.

Of course, it we digest the descriptor and what it implies in detail, we would be hard-pressed to think of it as a negative trait. The opposition to it is tribal to the extreme but communicates a few ideas that we need to understand.

‘Woke’ was once used as an adjective to describe a person who is socially conscious and considerate to all others, particularly so-called marginalized classes. It has been turned into a catch-all offense to anyone who dares encourage a conscious debate about whatever topic its user has deemed harmful to his or her world view. Whenever someone uses it, I read it as, “this person has an opinion, and I don’t like it!”

I describe it as the type of kindness this world needs more of. Political usage of this term needs to end. Indeed, if helping an elderly woman load groceries into her car, smiling at a stranger who may be having a bad day, or having an open mind about the socio-economic status of another is ‘woke,’ then count me among the ‘woke’ masses.

I’m never one to paint entire groups of people with a broad brush, but looking at the data may be useful in this instance. Look up the religious affiliations of the people who toss around this word, and you may be surprised. Self-described Christians tend to use it when something doesn’t happen to adhere to their biases, ignoring the fact that they follow arguably the most ‘woke’ person who ever lived—a young carpenter who made it his mission to preach compassion.

Jesus Christ healed lepers without telling them to get a job. He passed out bread and fish to thousands of hungry souls, each wandering on a separate journey through the woods. He taught the people to treat weary travelers with respect and to offer food and shelter. He stopped an angry mob from stoning someone they called an adulterer by saying “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” In each of these scenarios, Jesus offers compassion to someone marginalized by society. If being a Christian includes following the savior’s example and being ‘woke’ is treating other people like human beings in need of kindness, then you, too should be ‘woke.’

If that does not apply to you, I would implore you to stop using the word anyway, because doing so says a lot more about you than it does the people you are trying to offend. It says that you have no ideas of your own to share. It communicates that your opinion on the matter doesn’t come with a ready-made defense. It only shows that you are angry.

Anger is a real emotion worthy of addressing. Using it to hurl resentment toward others does not vanquish it from your own heart. Consider instead internalizing why you are upset and planning on what you can do to fight it. What positive can you offer to society? What better alternative to acceptance and inclusion can you propose to save the world?

It is a big world, and we all have our place. You don’t have to wander aimlessly in the woods forever. You are invited to set aside your fears of isolation and strive to become a part of society in whatever way you can.

I use the word ‘you’ here in neither the singular nor the plural second person, but as a hypothetical, and certainly not a pejorative. You, the individual reader, are free to interpret this advice in whatever way you choose. If you feel that it doesn’t apply to you, great!

There is a popular meme I have seen shared on social media that offers simple, great advice: “In a world where you can be anything, be kind.” Be kind to your elderly neighbor, to the hermit with no friends, to the immigrant toiling in the fields, to the “poor wayfaring man of grief,” (whoever he or she may be), and be kind to the newcomer that I was, and in some ways, still am.