Lately, every other message I get has the phrase “in these troubled times,” or in “these dark times” in it. They have become the new cliches of our time. Writers learn to be suspicious of cliches, they make for dreadful writing.

This language has almost become a greeting now, a reflex, one I am increasingly uncomfortable using. They seem self-serving to me when I use them.

So I don’t.

George Orwell wrote that if thought corrupts language, then language corrupts thought. I’ve learned to be careful of the words I use, they often corrupt my strength and beliefs, they can weaken me, and take my strength and purpose away.

The thing about the language we use is that we are listening to it, it can easily become our truth.

I always felt that way about “old talk,” the superficial chatting that is the language of the old. We’ve learned not to trivialize women and people of color, the elderly are fair game.

“At our age,” or “of a certain age, ” or “it’s too late for me at my age.” are phrases I never use. Old talk can kill.

I’m feeling that way about “troubled times” talk. Is it our reality or our prophecy?

I almost found myself using one of those phrases last night when I wrote about some guilt I felt for being happy in a time where so many people are unhappy. Did I really deserve solar paneling in the South pasture?

I wondered this week if I have the right to use those phrases because most of them do not apply to me, even though I am keenly aware of the suffering and anguish around me.

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I always puzzled at the very broad use of the term “white privilege,” it seemed glib and knee-jerk to me.

Until recently, I didn’t stop to consider what it meant or how it might apply to me.

The last few weeks have helped me to understand. It really isn’t something other people can talk me into, I had to feel it and see it myself.

The problem with “troubled times” talk is that it implies we are all in the same position. But I am not in the same position as George Floyd.

I know very well that that policeman would never have put his knee on my neck for nearly eight minutes while I fought for breath and pleaded for help. That doesn’t happen to people like me, and dark times are very different for me than for him.

The Pandemic devastated the lives of so many people, killed many, ruined the hopes and work of millions, interrupted the lives of many more, and made the lives of the poor and the vulnerable much poorer and more vulnerable than before.

The real damage didn’t come to me or people like me, we were born with the tools to survive it,  move beyond it, and repair ourselves.

We had to wear masks and stay home and fire up our devices and computers and Zoom one another in the evening for heart-to-heart talks.

But for me, if I am honest,  they were not really troubled or dark times.

I don’t have the right to use those words. And they are not true.

Sen. Kamala Harris told a reporter this yesterday:  “I’m really sick of having to explain my experiences with racism to people for them to understand that it exists.”

I think a lot of African-Americans are tired of the same thing.

“I am going to pieces,” someone wrote me last week, “Donald Trump is making me so upset, I can’t do my work or sleep well. This is the worst time of my life.”

When I read that message, I thought it was probably true that this was the worst time of her life, and wasn’t that the point?

I imagine people embrace those words in good faith, trying to signal that they get it, that they understand, that they are on the right side. But I think the appropriation of those words sends just the opposite message: we don’t get it at all. I know I didn’t.

It is very difficult to find the right language to talk about the things that are happening all around me. Language is my livelihood, but I am really struggling to find a language that is both comfortable and honest about the time we are living in.

I also know it is so important to try, that’s why I’m writing this. It is imperative to talk about these things, it is also frightening. It is so easy to say the wrong thing, we are urged to talk, but often punished harshly when we do.

I choose words for my work, and I am not afraid to be wrong or make a mistake. That’s how I will get there.

And I can’t adopt those words. This was a painful and surreal time for me, but they weren’t dark days. Those days belong to someone else.

Wringing our hands over the cruelty and arrogance in politics doesn’t really count in that way. We will survive, we will recover. We always do, that is what privilege is, that is what it means.

For so many Americans, the reality is that they never fully recover, or recover at all. They have always lived in dark times.

They never get the chance to heal quickly, they don’t have access to the tools most of us have, and sometimes they get so bogged down in our system of privilege that they just never had a chance.

And I don’t mean this only to be true for black or brown people.

Living in the country, I see how fragile the lives of my neighbors are, and the lives of the farmers are. They suffer as much or more as anyone, these are troubled times for them.

I will remember the grown men her crying because they could not understand how they were going to feed their children.

Nobody is gunning down their sons, but their sons are killing themselves with drugs and guns in ever-growing numbers.  These are troubled times for them.

We all suffer in our own way.

The death of George Floyd has shocked us into looking more deeply into the lives of black Americans and sharing their experience. Once again, we are shocked at what we have done and allowed others to do.

If the police don’t get them, the landlord will, and if the landlord doesn’t get them, the health care system will, and if that doesn’t get them, the cost of college or learning will, or the bloody massacres of gun violence, or the greedy ethos of modern corporations.

And perhaps saddest of all, there is the endemic belief that if none of these things get them, the police just might.

It’s a nightmare for so many, but not really a nightmare for me unless you count empathy.

And I don’t think empathy entitles me to refer to my life as dark or troubled, even now.

Some former colleagues got sick and died from the virus, but no one in my current life got sick or even knows anyone who got sick or died.

I am not African-American and have not sought or earned the right to speak for them, or in the same vein. I see their suffering and anger, but I can’t really feel it, I can only imagine it.

I know no one who has been killed unjustly by the police, and part of my own personal privilege is that I have never feared the police or worried for my life when they pulled me over for speeding.

I always believed things will turn out all right because they always have. I’ve never gone to sit with the stricken family of a son killed without reason or attended a funeral like that for any child I knew.

I helped raise a wonderful daughter, and I never felt the need to instruct her on how to stay alive if a police officer pulled her over.  I never once had to teach her to lie on the ground quickly when there was a loud sound outside.

What we don’t worry about is often as significant as what we do worry about.

I am troubled by these times, but they are not troubled times for me.

I bought a new car and contracted for solar panels to cut my electric bills and help the earth.

And both things will save me money, not cost me money. The system can work for people like me, I’ve learned that before.

My own work now – my blog and my work with refugees and the elderly – have never been busier or more fulfilling.

My dogs and my farm are fine, the animals healthy.

My wife is making her art and loving it, and selling it.

I bought a therapy dog whose genes came with most of the skills I need for therapy work.

Like many people, my bank account is thin, but I have enough money to pay my bills and do my work, and I am learning to live with what I need, not what I want.

The most damning thing to me about our President and many of his followers is that they seem unable to feel the pain or sorrow of others.

They can’t see past their own grievance or frustration or anger.

Everyone is a phony or a fake or an enemy or conspiring in secret. No opponents are genuine or feeling.

The world is a very dark place for them. I don’t wish to live in that country.

Our President can’t give the thing we most want from him – compassion and mercy. So we will have to remove him and give these things to ourselves.

Our President does not believe in “dark times” or “troubled times,” both phrases are anathema in the world of an alternate reality that he and his supporters live.

Troubled times don’t exist in his universe, so he can’t help us deal with them.

This is what the election this year is really about, at least for me. Can we be a kinder and more generous country? Or not.

We are a divided nation, but I see we are divided in more and different ways than we understand. To lift themselves up, some people really do need to keep other people down.

The philosopher and political activist Cornel West talked yesterday about the Floyd family after the funeral of George Floyd.  When tragedy struck their family, he said, they talked about nothing but love.

Our leaders talk about nothing but hate.

Frederick Douglass was right.

My happiness was purchased by the black man’s misery and the suffering of the poor. They have made the lives of me and people like me possible.

I am not prone to self-flagellation, I shake my head at white people who are so eager to tell others that they are racists, I don’t think that’s what people really need to hear. And more and more, I wonder if this can even be true.

I think of a system that brings bright times and safe times to many more people than me and the people like me.

People sent me money from all over the country to do the work I wanted to do and love to do, and I used a lot of money of my own  – supporting the refugees, assisting the elderly at the edge of life.

Because of these people, I was able to accomplish everything I needed to accomplish during this time

I never felt more needed, necessary, or fulfilled.

John Steinbeck wrote once that the Hebrew word “timshel – “Thou Mayest” may be the most important word in the world because it ways the door is always open.

“Thou Mayest,” and “Though Mayest Not” – we always have choices, the door is always open in the Kingdom Of Privilege. For many people, the doors are always closed.

I am not going to use the language of the oppressed as if it were my own.

The times I live in are a challenge for me, they call me to be a better and more thoughtful human and to accept that I can not buy my way into glory or Heaven by using language that comes from the lives of other people.