The word de jour

The word de jour

The word de jour is agency.

Euphemisms are a sort of mask

It seems as if we are particularly fond of masks these days.

Masks not only to protect I and thou from covid-19.

Masks to protect us from knowing we have more than our share.

            Food challenged = hungry

            Housing challenged = homeless

            Income challenged = poverty

            Welfare = assistance  = physically or emotionally ill

We have the agency to be poor?

The agency to make choices?

The agency to not choose mental illness, addiction, hopelessness?

The agency to seek hope when it has all been stolen.

Can one choose the agency to be food challenged?

To be homeless?

Perhaps agency is a blue light special at K Mart
Perhaps agency is  stocked near the cash register at the local convenient store

We righteously give to the less fortunate

We do not want to know that we know that we are one paycheck from

            hunger
            homelessness
            property
            desperation
            illness

We do not want to hear

Black Lives Matter demands agency.

Me Too Movement demands agency.

Immigrants fleeing financial, social and political violence demand agency.

Without masks we are in danger of not only covid 19

But the disease of knowing.

The real disease is the discomfort

of knowing.

Of knowing that we know.

Of hoping we do not see beneath the mask of euphemisms. 

We do not want to know that agency equals freedom.

That freedom is claimed and not often given

to other than the chosen few.


Written March 9, 2021
Jimmy F Pickett
coachpickett.org