Tell Me, What Is It You Are DOING With Your One Wild, Precious, “Still Coviding” Life?

Mary Oliver didn’t ask us who or what we plan to BE.

She asked us what we plan to do with our lives, and she might as well have asked us the verbs we would be known for.

My father and my father-in-law died at the ages of 89 and 90 on the same day a few months ago. As we wrote about their lives, “their verbs” flooded us with appreciation and gratitude.

Not their beliefs, no matter how strong those were. Not their ideas, their nouns, or the recognition they received.

I’ll share my verbs from this season.

My I am PROTECTING LIFE Verb List

Defying

Resisting

Truth-Telling

Analyzing

Mitigating

Present-Protecting

Reality-Dwelling

Assimilating Knowledge

Defending

Containing

Shielding

Directing

Predicting

Problem-Solving

Commiserating

Venting

Consuming (Covid Twitter Content)

Shielding

Limiting

Advocating

Surviving

Managing

Prioritizing

Procuring

…

None of these verbs are a poetic response to this profound, existential question.

They are ordinary and mundane.

But they are the verbs that are giving me and my family the best shot at a long, healthy lifespan.

My verbs used to be radically different. Before children, before the pandemic.

I still inhabit them, but the list above requires most of my time and energy.

I miss those verbs being my primary way of engaging with the world.

But part of the reason I have been able to stick with that long list is that I know the verbs I’m verbing the most these days do not define me or limit me.

They are not an identity, and I am not a noun.

The Impact of Noun- Based Language

Our country's institutions are deeply rooted in binary thinking, and the English Language, with its emphasis on nouns, embeds dualities and categorizes us as static beings.

Linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf have given their name to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which suggests that language shapes how we perceive and think about the world around us. Could it be that noun-based languages encourage us to objectify and categorize the world into isolated, static 'things'? Could verb-based languages instead help us understand the world through its complex, entangled, changing relationships?

Language is a critical part of how we see, understand, and consequently shape and inhabit the world. Many Indigenous languages speak in stories that act as a foundation for holistic and experiential learning, passing down teachings across generations. These stories serve as blueprints for how we can live in balance and reciprocity with the earth and our more-than-human kinfolk, from plants and animals, to soils, rivers and seas.

Indigenous languages, like Anishinaabemowin, are 80% verb-based, which similarly highlights the importance of relationships, acting together, and the plurality of being in this world. In contrast, noun-based languages, like English, tend to emphasise categorisations, dualisms, and classifications.

These tendencies end up creating a scaffolding for a static worldview that erases the flows of life.

Now apply those same tendencies to the pandemic.

Look at the vast difference in how those who engage with COVID as a noun live their lives today versus those who have engaged with it as a verb (still-COVIDING).

Noun-based language shapes binary thinking, and binary thinking shapes noun-based language. This vicious cycle makes us all susceptible to the onslaught of misinformation and manipulation.

We have repeatedly seen language used to intentionally distort the nature of this virus and the pandemic response in countless ways, but have we stopped to consider how deep it actually goes—literally down to the roots of the nouns and verbs?

Seeing COVID as a noun, an event in our lives rather than a verb, has led the masses to accept “living with it,” which means another either-or choice (e.g., we lock down again OR we live like it’s 2019). The damage from another noun-driven fan-favorite binary slogan, “Faith over Fear,” warrants its own essay. It has contributed to the current growing stance of “accepting” school shootings as something we have to live with.

Sound familiar? All of our responses appear to be built on the same chassis of binary thinking and noun-driven language.

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language.- Benjamin Wharf

Make no mistake; this doesn’t just apply to our shoddy view of nature and climate change: Noun-driven binary thinking has helped drive the bus of gun safety/school safety off the ledge, just as it has with our abysmal COVID response.

“Binary language does as much to choreograph the discussion as it is descriptive of it.”

One of my favorite Bharatanatyam dancers, in his post-performance lectures, often reminded native English speakers, such as myself, that the linear, beginning-middle-end, noun-driven language constructs might prevent us from fully appreciating the rich meaning of a dance form with choreography that was shaped by radically different forms of language and thinking than our own.

As it turns out, those same limiting constructs have predisposed so many people to experience the pandemic as an event (noun), with a series of either-or choices and a simple beginning-middle-end story structure. For bonus points, various parties (all of whom have been complicit in minimizing the virus), have attempted to go for another one of our fan favorites by seeking to be the heroic characters in the simple plot.

Contrary to popular belief, Still-Coviding is a non-binary, verb-driven approach to thinking, communicating, and acting that fuels the flow of life.

“Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it – that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, I act – and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.” – Stephen Fry

Even the mind is a VERB and not a noun, according to the prolific author and executive director of the Mindsight Institute, Dr. Dan Siegel, who passionately helps people experience opportunities for perpetual healing and well-being that become available when one accepts this truth.

In the spirit of busting up binary thinking, and linking what appear to be disparate parts of myself, I inhabit another set of verbs that are just as deeply active in my life, albeit less observably and measurably in this season with its emphasis on the protection of life.

They seem to be in outright opposition to my first list, but in fact, they are essential companions on my quest to live an extraordinary, long life characterized by fulfillment, purpose, passion, adventure, contribution, joy, health, and love.

These clashing verbs go together like inhale and exhale.

Like Yin and Yang.

Night and Day.

Death and Life.

And together they make something greater than the sum of their parts.

My life at its best is a dynamic dance between them, and knowing when to “verb each verb” and switch to its opposing partner is the key.

My I am LIVING LIFE Verb List

Visioning

Creating

Aligning

Attuning

Playing

Hoping

Loving

Future-seeding

Future-protecting

Transcending and including

Thinking

Encouraging

Exhorting

Accommodating/new structures for learning

Connecting

Collaborating

Exploring

Adventuring

Risk Taking

Advancing

Experimenting

Expanding

Leading

Inviting

Regulating

Co-Regulating

Leveraging Tensions

Relating

Serving

Contributing

Thriving

…

Wedding Our Verbs

Novavaxed and masked up, my family and I walked up a long hill to an outdoor wedding last night.

It was our first social gathering since the pandemic began. The family's daughter, who got married, has been a rock-solid support for us, but they have not been Covid cautious despite being personally ravaged by its impact.

That doesn’t change our love for them, but it has distanced us for the last five years. But knowing our masking would be impeccable, the entire event would be outdoors, and we wouldn’t eat, we knew we could do it safely.

No one was rude (surprise, given the geographically deep red location). However, we seemed to create visible confusion among attendees who didn’t know us, and I think I know why.  

The NOUNS people like us have been assigned to do not verb the way we were verbing last night—dancing, laughing, hugging, cheering, praying, and smiling with our eyes and our souls.

"I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category," he wrote. "I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process—an integral function of the universe."

-      R. Buckminster Fuller, I Seem to Be A Verb

We VERBED our way out of the “sheep” category, which we have no doubt been placed in by the onlookers (and maybe even family) last night.

“The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet all the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb.”
—bell hooks, All About Love

We loved them by witnessing these life-giving moments, connecting, encouraging, contributing, and relating WHILE simultaneously shielding, mitigating, protecting, defending, and resisting.

What if focusing on our verbs and not our nouns could make it possible for others to begin to do these life-protecting verbs as well?

What if intentionally putting our verbs with an AND could create a bridge into a new way of being together safely in this intensely polarized climate?

Let’s remove the Either-OR.

Let’s hunt for the unification of the AND.

Let’s resist the categorization.

So, what am I doing with my one wild and precious, Still-Coviding Life you ask?

I am MANAGING it and LEADING it.

I am CONTAINING it and EXPANDING it.

I am PROTECTING the PRESENT AND PROTECTING THE FUTURE.

I am PROTECTING my LIFE, and I am LIVING my LIFE.

Protecting the life you live so you can live the life you protect is a defiant act of self-love and a life-giving contribution to the world. Don’t let anyone persuade you otherwise.

Thank you, my like-minded still coviding readers for living out of a non-binary, verb-driven approach and not treating this virus as a noun or an event in a simple storyline that has ended.

Our verbs will change the world.

P.S. I would love to hear some of your life-giving verbs! Please comment or message me directly!