Using the language of agency

Orwell, young adults and me

Parent of Adults is an invitation to compare notes on life beyond the empty nest. Learn more about this newsletter & me or subscribe now, free or paid.

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Greetings from Wasta, South Dakota! I’m helping Sam with his move back to Oregon from Minnesota and the packing/sweeping/lugging came with a bonus mother-son road trip from St. Paul to Portland.

Wasta, SD or Schitt’s Creek?

It’s 6:30 AM. I’m currently sitting in a green patio chair outside our pokey motel room reading while Sam’s sleeps off the stress of his big move. The motel’s gravel parking lot is occupied by a few scraggly weeds and a single car: Sam’s Subaru, a lifesaving hand-me-down from his grandmother, now packed full with everything he owns.

My road trip book is Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit. Rebecca Solnit is one of my heroes. Her book, Hope In the Dark, forever altered and expanded my approach to activism. I also love roses and am fascinated by George Orwell (who isn’t these days?) so Orwell’s Roses was bound to move to the top of my library list.

I read Orwell’s landmark dystopian novel 1984 in…1984 (I was in high school). But he made an even bigger impression on me in college when I read Politics and the English Language, an essay he wrote in 1946. The essay sparked my curiosity about rhetoric and the sometimes-dark art of persuasive language.

In the essay, Orwell blasts the use of lazy metaphors and euphemistic, evasive political writing as a way to justify atrocities and squelch creative thought. Language gives shape to ideas that could threaten political power. Totalitarian regimes seek to strip language of its utility by complicating it or diluting it so much it becomes useless, like a dull knife.

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. — George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

Orwell comes across as cranky and pedantic (and he probably was), but his moral clarity and righteous rage burned itself into my teenage heart. Like Solnit’s Hope In the Dark, it permanently changed how I thought about the interaction of language and power.

Back to Orwell’s Roses. In 1936, a decade before he began writing 1984, Orwell planted a modest rose garden outside his cottage in Wallingford, England. The man who would go on to write one of the most famous anti-fascist novels was a lover of humble, growing things. Orwell’s rose garden — a speck of beauty and hope he cultivated between brutal world wars — captured Solnit’s imagination and sent her on a research odyssey through history and around the world. The result is a wandering collection of essays about Orwell himself but also the nature of language, beauty, power, propaganda, injustice, and joy.

Orwell’s Roses re-ignited the flame my early Orwell reading started. I shouldn’t be surprised that Orwell is one of Solnit’s heroes as she is one of mine.

We’re living in particularly Orwellian times right now. You’ve probably heard that Trump has ordered several Smithsonian museums to scrub their exhibits until they reflect only the harsh, white glare of nationalist propaganda.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. — George Orwell, 1984

We’re in a war of words.

I worry about how this impacts every observant young adult contemplating a future framed by poisoned rhetoric. For many, talk of beauty and hope rings hollow and cynicism (or, doomerism as Sam calls it) seems the only rational choice.

But that’s the trap, isn’t it? Despair is a dictator’s weapon because it’s seductive and infectious.

When we abandon the language of beauty and joy we treat hope as if it’s already gone and starve our own energy source. I’m not immune to despair, but I refuse to let its manufactured tentacles pull me under without a fight. I want my kids to hear agency and hope in my language. It doesn’t take much. Even something as small as this newsletter can provide a spark.

The low rumble of the interstate reminds me it’s time to get back on the road. As I get up to stretch (that metal chair was hard), a line from another famous dystopian novel pops into my head:

nolite te bastardes carborundorum

Margaret Atwood made up the phrase as a secret rallying cry for Offred, the protagonist in The Handmaid’s Tale:

Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

The Latin might be gibberish, but the language is spot on.

Comments are open to all and past issues move behind the paywall after a few months. Paid subscribers get unlimited access to comments & the archive — my thank you for your support.

One last thing: I forgot I shared this NYT opinion piece a few weeks ago! Read it (that’s a free gift link) — totally relevant.

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🗄️ FROM THE ARCHIVES

More about grounded activism and attempting to model agency and hope

The Rosebush and the Dog Sh*t

Building a bridge from "me" to "us"

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📝 NOTES OF NOTE

• This was a heavy read for those of you focused on end-of-summer preparations. Sorry about that (it’s where my head’s at). Wishing you well as you take those big steps.

• Liz Gumbinner wrote beautifully about this moment in her family, and the inadequacy of language to describe it. Read On the Last Day Before My Youngest Child Goes to College at I’m Walking Here.

• Amy Byrnes shares her incredulity and takes a well-earned victory lap at having made it through four sets of college years. 👊🏽 Read I (Really) Did It at The Midlife Diaries.

• Mom’s in her final stretch of rehab after her fall. Next up: the transition back to her apartment and the work to set up more support. I’ll let you know how it goes.

• Thankfully, Mom’s rehab care has been excellent and her Medicare + supplemental insurance plan covers the cost. Learning the ins-and-outs of Medicare (etc.) has been a big lift and I’m starting to see we’ve been lucky that Mom’s injury fell within the time- and payment limits (so far). Lauren Klinger tells her father’s complicated rehab story in What Costs $209.50 per Day and is Also Terrible? at Learn From My Mistakes.

See you in the comments. 🩵

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