"Woke" is such a strange frame
The alternative is what? Being dead asleep?!
Of all the fights I could pick this week, one that my brain keeps ruminating on is the message discipline of the right-wing using “woke” as a dog whistle.
Trump and people who love/supplicate to him have used the term “woke” more times than I can count in recent weeks - both in pre-written remarks as well as off-the-cuff convos with the press.
I keep returning to this very strong memory of a dialogue I had years ago with my dear friend and mentor, Deb. Clear as day, I can recall asking her,
“Are you sure life wasn’t easier when I felt asleep?”
This was an honest question. I wasn’t being facetious.
I was speaking with Deb, many decades my senior, about what it had been feeling like to carry the weight of being a leader recently. Paying close attention, and being finely attuned to the people and situations around me took more energy, concentration, and empathy than earlier periods in my life when I can admit that I was more checked out.
There was a period of time, before my brain was fully finished cooking, when my developmental stage and phase of life was much more selfish - self-focused, self-consumed. I was growing up. I was growing into myself. I was trying hard to make sense of the world and where I fit in it.
Then, there were the periods of time when I was mono-maniacally focused. In those periods, it felt like my entire life force was dedicated in basically one direction - work, a health scare, a relationship.
In the “now times,” meaning this phase of my life and this moment in the American project, I am struck with “woke” being positioned as an insult - as if being awake is a silly, stupid posture.
I supposed that we could all choose, instead, to play pretend, operate out of denial and distraction, sinking into our phones and essentially, “dancing through life” - to quote a song sung by the initially daft boyfriend in Wicked.
For those of us mentally, spiritually, and physically feeling the back-and-forth pull between being awake (“woke”) and being asleep, I’d like to make the case briefly for consciousness ;)
BEING AWAKE / WOKE vs. BEING ASLEEP
being awake, we are able to utilize all of our senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste), resulting in a much more rich and robust experience of life
being asleep, we are literally unconscious, shutting down, oftentimes having no memory at all of the sensory experience we just lived through for a stretch of hours
being awake, we can connect with other human beings, learning, feeling, and growing because of their insight, experience, and wisdom
being asleep, we are missing a vast majority of the goodies that other people have to offer
being awake, we are able to grapple with reality. The world is complex. People come in a nearly never-ending range of shapes, sizes, needs, and wants. When awake, we are able to wrestle with what is, what people are telling us, showing us, and asking of us.
when we are asleep, we are in la-la land. Just two nights ago I awoke from a dream where I was trying to change into a teal bathing suit in a fictional locker room full of both YouTube personalities and girls from my elementary school and childhood church group?? (Don’t worry, I’ll ask my therapist what that all meant during my next session).
Awake vs. asleep has been a tongue-in-cheek metaphor. But I’m also serious.
I believe that recognizing that we are awake at a time when other adults are trying desperately to squish their eyes shut and make it all go away is both an existential and material fight for which worldview will actually take hold.
As an awake/woke human being, it is very clear to me that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color are having a wildly different experience (usually worse) than white people living in the U.S.
As an awake/woke person, it is obvious that gender identity, expression, and sexuality exist across a whole range of human experiences. Of course trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming people exist - I’m friends with them. That’s not radical; that’s simply reality.
As an awake/woke person, I can hold the complexity of living in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-lingual community. America’s ability to innovate, produce, and lead has historically been in large part because of the incredible mix of minds, hearts, and perspectives here, not despite that fact.
There are other nation-states, places on the planet, that are much more homogenous. We are not that. We are heterogeneous. We are mixed across meaningful lines of difference. And we can either behave like scared children afraid of a boogeyman they’ve never encountered, or we can behave like adults who recognize our mix is our greatest asset.
We have an opportunity right now, so did our ancestors, and so do our children, of choosing to do the more tiring work of living awake rather than sleep-walking. I promise it’s worth it, and it’s needed.
I, for one, am planning, when people try to insult me by calling me or my work “woke,” to respond with,
“Thank you for noticing! I am, indeed awake. I’m very good at dealing with reality as it exists in front of us. How about you?”