I recently posted this on Facebook about the toxic term “Woke.”

According to WordHippo.com, as an adjective (dialect, African American Vernacular, or slang), the word means “conscious and not asleep.”

In the US and Canada, it is slang that means “alert and aware of what is going on, especially in social justice contexts.”

What is the opposite of the word “woke”?

Flaked out, dozed off, vegetated, lulled, zizzed, crashed, zoned out, and, my favorite, asleep at the wheel.

Over the 8 years I have attended college with 20- and 30-somethings, I have never heard the word “Woke” used by them or by any professors. This is a total figment of the right wing’s imagination.

Get help. See a therapist.

This is why I prefer the word “Awake” as an alternative to the one the right wing in this country has weaponized as an insult, without realizing they have no idea what they’re talking about.

WordHippo.com asks, “What does ‘awake’ mean?”

According to the website, being “awake” means being in a state of “not asleep; conscious,” and, by extension, “Alert, aware,” two states of being that give me power by allowing me to know what is happening around me.

WordHippo.com further defines it as “to excite or to stir up something latent” and “to rouse from a state of inaction or dormancy.”

I interpret this as the ability to stir up action when necessary. If there is one bit of wisdom I’ve learned in all my years, it is that one must be prepared to stir the pot to boil when one witnesses some wrongs. You could ignore it, and you would probably be able to live the rest of your life contentedly.

I was taught from a young age in Catholic school and even in American history classes that Americans fight for justice (it’s the American way). Of course, there has always been a disconnect between slogans and reality. 

However, I think I took much of that belief to heart.

For years, as part of my morning ritual, I’ve studied wise quotes from men and women throughout history. Insightful, jaw-dropping, mesmerizing statements that give me plenty of Aha moments.

One source has been a Kindle book, “Positive Affirmations for Atheists, Agnostics, and Secular Humanists,” edited by I.M. Probulos. The chapters are organized under titles such as Reason, Success, Self-Help, Happiness, and Journey. 

If I may, I borrow a quote from tennis great Arthur Ashe, “Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.”

Life is a journey full of successes and failures. What matters most is that you deal with each victory and each defeat now and learn a lesson from each, without caring about what you will make of it a year, five years, or ten years from that moment.

Who gives a shit about the future when that moment is the most important? What bit of wisdom could you extract, or did you blow the opportunity and instead decide to worry about the long-term impact of your choices?

This is especially true when you witness injustice, whether it is a bully in your class or a group of people who mock another group because of their religion, race, or gender.

You can see what you see, shrug your shoulders, and walk away to become who you want to be. You didn’t learn anything at that moment in your life journey.

Or you can say something, or even do something better. Not alone. Stir others to join you. Find power in rousing “from a state of inaction or dormancy.”

I’ve been awake since my formative years in the seminary (1962-1964), when I became increasingly aware of a world beyond the classroom and study hall, where evil men and women committed immoral acts against the less powerful.

During those moments when one or two of my classmates felt it was OK to shout a racial slur at me, I realized that those incidents were not isolated and that they were not alone in their behavior. They must have learned that behavior from someone. That someone was from somewhere in the real world called America.

That awareness stayed with me when I returned to the Bronx in 1964, and I would watch for the next four years as the struggles for freedom and against injustice continued, not only in the South of this country but also up north. 

Our failings as a nation were exposed, and many of us took up the burden to do what we could. We were awakened to the contradiction between what we were led to believe are the ideals of this nation and the reality of race and class.

I wasn’t always right. It was easy to fall into the trap of being swept up by slogans and the illusion that we were winning the fight for justice. Throughout the seventies, I believed journalism was the weapon to be used in the good fight. Sometimes it worked, but other times I realized that the goal of a commercial television station was to sell commercials, not always the truth.

Inevitably, you find yourself swimming in doubts about the fight, and you surrender to survival instincts (paying the rent, food, clothing, and a car). Suddenly, you’re not awake anymore, but instead, according to WordHippo.com, asleep, dormant, dozing, unawakened, inattentive, crashed out, dead to the world.

That is why I write every week, to ensure I don’t fall asleep, be inattentive, or ever crash out dead to the world again.

It’s a small act, I concede. I may not reach large audiences, and my words may not always make sense because I may not use the right words to inspire and break through the wall of ignorance that seems to envelop us all these days, within our silos.

In the meantime, I’ll keep doing whatever I can to stay awake, whether it’s reading, writing, or throwing verbal hand grenades to break down those walls and continue the fight against injustice and the social and political afflictions that prevent us from becoming the best America we can ever be.