Actions Over Words
My brilliant and multi-talented hair stylist, Okema Diaz, once told me during one of my haircuts: “The same lesson’s gonna keep showing up – until you learn it.” Those words have rattled around in my head ever since. I’ve repeated them to others, I’ve said them to myself.
Here’s one lesson that I haven’t yet fully learned:
To focus on people’s actions instead of being seduced by their words.
This is something that my clients have to confront all the time, too. Whether it’s getting a “fake yes” during a negotiation – like being told time and time again that some unspecified raise is “coming” – or getting lip service about how an organization plagued with unchecked institutional racism and sexism is 100% dedicated to building an inclusive culture for BIPOC, women and nonbinary folks.
To me, words like that are nothing more, or less, than institutional gaslighting.
Talk is cheap. Show me in your actions.
I say this as a person who normally gives people the benefit of the doubt – by default. And I don’t necessarily want to change this about myself, as that seems like giving into cynicism or despair. But I do find myself wondering if I routinely give people too much credit based on what they say and am not being vigilant enough when it comes to examining their actions or inaction.
So I suppose the lesson here is to keep your wits about you. Especially in this political climate, in which women of color are still tokenized, underpaid, and taken advantage of, in which black and indigenous lives and bodies are subjected to harassment and brutal violence, in which complex global political games are being played in the lead-up to yet another election year here in the US.
Though it can be tiring, keep paying attention to what people do, how they act, what decisions they make, how they allocate time, money, and attention – over what they say.