Some of us have been awakened or lulled to a different level of sunken place by the trendy new wokeness. According to Merriam-Webster, Woke is a slang term that is easing into the mainstream from some varieties of a dialect called African American Vernacular English (sometimes called AAVE). In AAVE, awake is often rendered as woke, as in, “I was sleeping, but now I’m woke.
'Woke' is increasingly used as a byword for social awareness.
The good news is that society has finally carved out a space for people of color, the disenfranchised, and women to speak about past or current mistreatment. The voices of the oppressed are finally being heard, and now it feels like we can finally stick it to the man, or men, or women and voice our distaste for bigotry, unequal pay and homophobia. However, like anything, this social trend of wokeness, without a foundation that is authentic to your personal life experiences can make you unproductive and bitter. Below are five signs that perhaps you may be too woke for your own good.
Food stresses you out. You haven’t eaten chicken in two months (or people think you haven’t). Thanks to the Netflix documentary called What the Health, you have sworn never to eat chicken and fast food again. The problem is that you don’t know what to eat, and now you have anxiety around food. Though a healthy “whole foods plant based diet” is ideal, try reading the book Eat Right for Your Blood Type. It will help you discern what the right diet is based on your blood type.
Your Spiritual Center is Out of Wack. You believe in God, but your relationship is secret. You are afraid to offend people, therefore your relationship with God is not evident. You refuse to be bound by religious standards or traditions, so you no longer attend church or you attend beside Baptist (online). In doing so, you are completely forsaking the assembling of yourselves one to another (Yup, there is a scripture that goes with that). Yet it feels safer, and it is annoying that all of the preachers are asking for money. Like what do they need all this money for? Church isn’t a business, is it? Actually, it is a business, and there are tons of moving parts. If you decide not to give, that’s fine. But like any other non-profit, they must hold fundraisers.
You’re Bored. You don’t know what to do on Sundays. Since you no longer attend church and you are boycotting football, you have nothing to do on Sundays. Your wokeness has caused a riff in some of your relationships and even the easiest day of the week has become the most confusing. You’ve also stopped doing the things you love. Somehow they have become less important, or you don’t have the emotional energy to do them. Why? Because your energy is being soaked up by your newsfeed. The bad news, the drama, and the thousands pieces of useless information that you view consciously everyday that ends up staying in your subconscious.
You Believe Everything is Trump’s Fault. Deep down, from an intellectual standpoint you know better, but your emotions lead you back to him every time. The truth is that lots of things are his fault, but not everything. You say the number 45 at least everyday. Whether verbally, in your head, or via your Facebook status. Though you would rather not think about him, you can’t help but subconsciously blame him for everything. If you still say his name daily, you are both too woke and angry. Because the name gives you that intoxicating thrill that is similar to passion. The name evokes a feeling in your body that allows you to easily lose focus or be distracted. Before you know it, you are fueled by a level of outrage that leaves you are unproductive, and you have picked up some habit along the way to cope. You have spouted, shared, and discussed something about big D more than you can count in the last year. For your own mental health there needs to be a shift and refocusing of your energy.
You Feel Lost
If you are really honest with yourself you feel a little lost in the sauce. You are not quite sure how it happened, but before you “woke up” there was something ground breaking that you were working on. You were either going back to school, starting a business, or learning French. But somewhere between the election and the videos of people being killed in cold blood, you’ve changed. It wasn’t intentional, and it didn’t happen all at once, but there was a shift. There is something else you should or could be doing. You are not quite sure what it is, and it was a really amazing boss move.
Recovery
It is a great time in society. There is a paradigm shift happening, and even the solar eclipse was a sign that there is an alignment happening throughout the universe. The old systemic walls of racism, sexism, and homophobia are being torn down. So what’s next? Besides more hashtags, disasters, and crumbling of power? You. Get ready, because while wokeness is awesome, the real wars that are waging are not being discussed on social media. They are occurring while many of us are inserting a hashtag, commenting and sharing our perspective. The reality is that social media is really a large data driven survey used to sway millions of perspectives and behaviors around the world, which is why some countries have banned it. Whatever that ground breaking thing you were doing before the wokeness happened, get back to it. Dust it off and re-start. Because while being woke is important, having the foundation set in place to change the world is even more significant for the revolution. Remember, it will not be televised.