“We often tell our students, ‘The future’s in your hands.’ But I think the future is actually in your mouth. You have to articulate the world you want to live in.”
| Question to LiveWhat difference does it make, even in the most ordinary exchanges, if you take in Ocean’s wisdom that the future is in your mouth? |
| Integration Step
Notice all the death metaphors that come so naturally, so blithely. Start to shift them, and feel what that starts to shift in you. |
| Heart of the Matter
What happens if we alter our language? Where would our future be? Where will we grow towards? We are so fluent in the sensibility and imagination and atmosphere of violence with our words. Part of the work of making hope more reasonable and more possible is putting more vivid, intentional language out there to illustrate its reality and its possibilities. Words orient us and orient the atmosphere of our cultures, both microcultures and the larger culture. The invitation here is to really pay attention to the words you use, the words you engage, and the worlds these words are actively bringing into being and sustaining — to imagine the possibility of building a vocabulary of muscular hope. Building a vocabulary of the strength and the possibility of life, a vocabulary that makes the conditions more likely for what is lifegiving and redemptive. Words make worlds, the ancient rabbis said. “We often tell our students, ‘The future’s in your hands,’ Ocean Vuong says. “But I think the future is actually in your mouth. You have to articulate the world you want to live in, first. We pride ourselves as a country that’s very technologically advanced. We have strong, good sciences, good schools, very advanced weaponry, for sure — but I think we’re still very primitive in the way we use language and speak.” How will you move even through the most ordinary exchanges, if you take in Ocean’s wisdom that the future is in your mouth? |
