I find when I catch myself using the word “they”, or worse yet, “everyone” I have slipped into a dangerous spot. Slid down the slope into self pity. Gotten turned around on the moor of self-delusion.

This is victim verbiage. Language used to isolate myself in the deception that no one else has pain as significant as mine. Everyone else has life beat. They all have figured out the secret.

“They” and “everyone” lead to a lot of “I” statements. Where I am the most significant, abused, snowflake, completely misunderstood by everyone. They just don’t get it. Get me.

Recently during a counseling session I was on an “everyone/they” tirade regarding some insecurity in my life and my counselor graciously, but firmly asked me “Who is everyone?”

Everyone is my own self-obsession. Everyone is the warning flare my spirit is firing up through my mouth to say “Stop examining your navel!”

These words present me the opportunity to pause & look up – look around. Step in, stop speculating. Engage with others, not isolate. Learn their lives, as they are, not as I imagine them to be as an excuse for my unchecked neurosis. When I use “they” & “everyone” I have turned my friends into the other – flat and one dimensional, to justify my state of self-absorption.

How we speak matters. It reveals our functional theology.