Untying "That's nice"
Dear jo,
“That’s great.”
“That’s a good song.”
“That’s awful.”
“That sucks.”
Simple statements, these. Pedestrian turns-of-phrase uttered casually, innocently. Yet they’ve been my sworn enemy for at least two years!!
Okay, okay, a bit of fun in hyperbole. But it IS fun!!
What I’m talking about is “judgements.” That deeply embedded psychosomatic faculty we are born with, that gains expression from our very first cry into the postnatal reality of infancy. “Don’t be so judgy.” Some philosophical and spiritual systems go to battle with the habit energy of judgement-making, rendering their own verdict against this most inborn of human traits. And sometimes I’m sympathetic with that suggestion, but it’s often taken too far to be fair or healthy, in my estimation.
Still, my two-year-plus project has its roots in this mental and affective and linguistic maneuver. You see, when we utter, “That’s great.” — it points outward, to a semblance of objectivity in the things we experience. “That sucks.” It’s an evaluation and subsequent labeling—a natural process, a simple, everyday orientation to an interaction.
But is it also a bit of rhetorical violence? Is it also a wielding of a semantic hammer that risks forbidding or alienating other points-of-view, other interpretations? Does “That sucks” invalidate the others who may feel “That’s alright” or “That’s great” or “I’m not sure”?
It’s also the “outward pointing” that I’ve been wondering about. How does that labeling and judging of the situation, or the song, or the person, or the weather—good/terrible, amazing/boring, nice/sucks—actually take us further away from the intimacy of our subjective experience from which the judgement arises? Is there some blessing or some benefit to turning the expression inward, to owning our lived experience with more awareness and vulnerability?
“That’s great” could become “I really like that.”
“That’s a good song” could become “I’m enjoying that song.”
“That’s awful” could become “I really don’t like that.”
“That sucks” could become “I feel uncomfortable with that.”
Clumsily, and through repeated missteps, I’ve been engaged in this language experiment. And it’s brought me quite closer to me.