Word Wise

Chapter 1

SHOULDS AND OTHER LIES

The world is out of tune. The world is noisy. The world is full of the sounds of words that don’t resonate with people’s thoughts. And it’s out of tune because it’s not using the language of the senses. Instead, it’s using fake, plastic copies of true sounds. It’s using word trash: the language of advertising, the language of magazines, the language of television. Most of all, the language of social media, a language of egos and fear.

Harmony happens when what you express aligns with what you feel and mean. An orchestra harmonizes when each musician plays the notes in synchrony. Each one of the musicians in the orchestra sees and plays the same note at the same time with their unique instrument, breath, or hand movement. If you feel a G note but you play an F, you will be out of tune. Seeing and feeling a G note while playing an F is a form of lying. Sure, the act itself might have just been a mistake—an accidental note played—of words said out of habit rather than consciously chosen. But we’d still feel and hear that the F didn’t resonate, and unless we corrected our note with an adjustment, we’d allow the lie to persist.

We are in the habit of not paying attention to how we play our instruments of language. The more we use a word, the more attention we bring to it and to what it represents. Our goal with this book is to find ways to use harmony more often and find ourselves resonating more because of it.

I assume that you, the reader, are not an intentional liar. What I’m more interested in talking about in this chapter are the lies we don’t know we are telling through unconscious word selection and bad vocabulary habits. They are the parasites nibbling away at our trust and well-being every day. I call them lie makers.

Always and Never

Dictionaries define always as “at all times, at one uninterrupted time, forever.” Have you used the word always in the last week? What about never? The only always that’s true is that there is always an exception to your always and never. And the only never that’s true is that there is never a knowable never. For those of you in relationships, the following sentences may sound familiar:

That’s a liar liar frequent flyer. Everybody who can hear has listened to something. Otherwise, it would be impossible to learn how to speak. So what’s the honest version? “You are not listening to me now.” If you say, “You never listen,” to your girlfriend, the natural response for her is to be defensive—and what she defends is her truth against your lie (that she never listens). As her defensiveness grows into anger, she’ll exaggerate her response into a lie about you: “You’re always moaning about me.” Within a moment, no one is telling the truth. And without any specifics to connect to, neither one of you can discharge your resentment. Instead, you both become charged with more frustration, resentment, and anger until one of you (or both) explodes. And then you break up or make up, or you go passive-aggressive for months or years until you barely talk, until divorce or death, whichever comes first. That’s why it’s best for your relationship to steer clear of the word-trash lies in the first place—so you avoid all the nonsense and stay connected through the truth. If your boyfriend does or says something that irks you, you tell him you resent him for it, but you keep your resentment specific to (and limited to) what he did or said, when he did or said it—we’ll talk about how to do that with specific word choices in chapter 9.

Here are a couple more word-trash statements you’ll hear in an average relationship:

The honest version? “You didn’t take the trash out this week and the week before last.”

The truth? “I resent you for saying that Kim Kardashian’s butt is real and amazing.”

These are examples of inconspicuous and unconscious lies that disconnect us from ourselves and from one another. But we’re all good people here, right? We don’t tell lies!

No! That’s a lie! Everybody—myself included—is at least an occasional, unconscious liar. And if we have any politicians in the room, we can expand that to regular and conscious liars. But even little lies demoralize.

In February 2018, I conducted a survey on the word choices of 80 speech-language pathologists (SLPs) working in middle and elementary schools in the New York City public education system. These SLPs had attended my seminars on connection at New York University. I measured their usage frequency of 63 words that represent the 12 different word categories you will read about in this book. I defined the usage frequency as 1=daily, 2=often, 3=sometimes, 4=rarely, 5=not at all. The SLPs’ average use of always was 2.33 (often) and use of never was 2.15 (more often). If we are to believe their words, never happens more often than always—try getting your head around that. This trend is also reflected in the Google Books corpus¹: For every two always, there are three nevers.

Both always and never fall into the lie makers category. The SLPs working in middle schools use lie makers more often (average of 1.96) than those working in elementary schools (2.16). This is likely due to the influence of the elementary schoolchildren themselves: The younger we are, the more we speak of things we notice with our senses. We point at specifics: “I want the ball; it’s red.” As we grow older, middle school exposes us to the language of abstraction and generalization, also known as exaggeration or lies: “Billy never shares the ball with us. He always keeps it.” As adults, we can do a better job at not passing on our abstractions—lies—to our children. Almost everyone I know uses always and never more than once a day, and, in some cases, more than once per five minutes of conversation. But the most used lie maker is not always or never. It’s should.

De-Moral-Lies (Shoulds)

Have you spoken a sentence today containing the word should? It doesn’t matter if it was I should or I shouldn’t: “I shouldn’t have another coffee; I should go to bed earlier; I should be good.” The synonym of should, more at home in a Downton Abbey script, is ought. In her book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, palliative-care nurse Bronnie Ware tells us the number-one deathbed regret is having lived a life of shoulds and ought to’s: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” If you can work on trashing your shoulds, you will have taken a step towards a regret-free life.

Shoulding yourself is an example of moralizing: trying to model your existence around rules made up by your mind—rules that your ego identifies with. Let me be clear: When you should or should not yourself, you sh*t on yourself. And we are sh*tting on ourselves multiple times a day, although elementary school SLPs sh*t on themselves less often (1.82) than those in middle schools (1.61). Whether you call it shoulding or sh*tting, moralizing has nothing to do with happiness. It has everything to do with ego, and ego has everything to do with happiness traps: Ego tries to grow itself through identification with and acquisition of labels, money, and things to gain proof of a physical existence. Ego is a creation of our imagination. And if it’s not real, it’s not honest.

So, what’s the egoless alternative for the shoulds? I spent some time with a vegan friend over the weekend, so I’ll use this as an example: I was explaining that I’ve noticed myself feeling more sluggish after my cappuccino-induced caffeine buzz wears off and I imagine that has more to do with the milk than the caffeine. I have two choices in how I express myself next. I could say, “I should stop eating dairy” or I could use one of the following more specific (and honest) sentences: “I could try giving up dairy,” “I want to try almond milk,” or even “I need to give up milk if I want to stop feeling crappy after my coffee.” Any one of these three sentences is more connected to my truth than a sh*tty should. Sometimes we sh*t on ourselves to go to events—such as a girlfriend’s friend’s second child’s christening—when the truth is we don’t want to go and we use the should go label as a way of withholding truth. Withholding, says Dr. Brad Blanton, “is the most pernicious form of lying.”

Pernicious is another way of saying destructive or deadly, and what withholding destroys is human connection. Why do we say, when someone is talking about the book she is reading, “I should read that book, too”? Why not, “I want to read it, too”? Why make it sh*tty? Often, we don’t want to get vulnerable and tell the truth that we want to do things: “I should go with you to Bali.” Our ego says, I’m not worthy of saying what I want—who am I to have my own desires? Getting vulnerable enough to take off your should mask takes courage. But, as with exercise, the more often you do it, the easier it gets. Over the last three years, I’ve been able to eliminate most of my shoulds. Nowadays if I hear myself slip one into conversation, I stop, retract, and correct what I just said into a more accurate expression of my truth. That action alone is a way to instantly increase the connection in a conversation: As soon as I say, “I don’t know why I just said should. What I mean is I want to,” both of us in the conversation start paying more attention to our word choices, and we boost our connection.

Saying “You should” to your loved one is as healthy for your relationship as taking a (moral) dump on the one you love. When you say, “You should stop eating sugar” to your girlfriend, she’ll want to slap you. Ego repels. She feels that you are taking the moral high ground, trying to control her, acting as Mr. High and Mighty. You patronized her. Instead, if you want to talk about her candy-munching habits (out of concern for her health), try saying, “Would you be willing² to give up processed sugar for a week?” Or “I recommend giving up processed sugar for a week and seeing how you feel.” Or “Would you be willing to read this article [about sugar]?”

If you want your relationship to last, don’t tell her what she should or shouldn’t be eating. The word should—and the negative should not—is a demoralizing dump on someone (or yourself). If you post on social media using the word should, it’s a sh*tpost. According to BuzzFeed copy chief Emmy Favilla, this is an existing internet term for garbage content. Let’s expand the meaning to cover content that contains the word should. My final take on shoulds is this, and it’s something that’s become a message on repeat in my interactions with others: You can replace I should with either I want to or I need to, and if you don’t want to or need to do something, then why the hell are you doing it?

Here’s my suggestion: Be open to listening for your and others’ shoulds and start making a mental or toilet paper note every time you hear them. On your phone or in a notepad, start a Should Sh*t Log for the next week, starting now. Every time you notice yourself saying the word should, write I sh*t on myself with the time and date. After a week of entries, reread your “Should Sh*t Log.” Congratulations! You have now identified the bullsh*t of your ego. Now flush it down the toilet.

False Necessities (Have to, Need to)

“Ought once was, of all things, the past tense of owe.… But when you owe, you’re under an obligation,” says English professor John McWhorter in his book, Words on the Move. Obligation is a synonym of need, and so our word–bowel movements evolve from moral dumps (of should) into need–diarrhea. Recently, a friend of mine said, “I have to go to a wedding.” My response: “OK, but you want to go to the wedding so I’m curious about you saying, ‘I have to go,’ rather than ‘I’m going.’”

I have to means “I need to.” We have very few true needs, and going to a wedding isn’t one of them. For reference, let’s check the best-known model of human needs, developed by psychologist Abraham Maslow, most commonly known as Maslow’s hierarchy (of needs):

Yep, can’t see going to weddings anywhere in there. It turns out that she wanted to go to the wedding more than she didn’t want to go. No one forced her to go, and she didn’t sh*t on herself to go—although sometimes we do sh*t on ourselves to go to weddings that we don’t want to go to and mislabel the sh*t (should) as a need, to disguise the sh*t at the core of what we are saying. Why did she say, “I need to go to a wedding”? Why not, “I’m going to a wedding”? Why make it sh*tty? Perhaps she didn’t want to get vulnerable and tell the truth that she wanted to go. Perhaps she had a thought along the lines of I’m not worthy of saying what I want to do, so she created a lie to mask how she felt. She disconnected. For me, needs are even more simple than Maslow’s. The only thing I need to do is go to the toilet (where I also want to flush my shoulds—but I don’t need to), eat, drink, breathe, sleep, receive and give affection and love, have physical contact with other human beings—more hugs, please—and have a place to sleep each night that’s warm and dry enough. True needs are few, wants are common, don’t wants are often even more common, but I want shoulds to be nonexistent.

Footnotes

1 Searchable via Google Ngram viewer; see page 21.

2 For more on the power of willing, see page pages 157-58.