If you’ve been here for a while, then you know that I attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. AA is (in)famous for many things, including its slogans, like One Day At A Time, It Is What It Is, Give Time Time, This Too Shall Pass, and other gems.
I’ve never been a huge fan of slogans. I find them unhelpful in the moments when I am struggling most. Imagine feeling the height of anxiety—sweating, heart palps, thoughts running amok—and here comes a happy camper. They put their hand on your back and say “One Day At a Time,” to try to calm you down and bring you back to center. In those kinds of instances, focusing on a slogan might work for some people—but it definitely does not work for me.
On the other hand, as little philosophical sound bites—tips for good living—I love them. And when tossed into the mix at the right moment, slogans can do a good job of redirecting your energy. Imagine you’ve been complaining for five days straight about the same thing that just is not going your way. Your good friend has pretty much had it with you, but they want to be nice about it because they love you. So when you finally stop yammering on for a second, they chime in with a quick, “sounds like it’s really hard for you right now. You won’t always feel this way, you just gotta give time time.” Can’t really argue with that. You might not feel better tomorrow, but you’ll definitely feel different.
But this is a post about acronyms, not slogans, and in a few paragraphs, More Will Be Revealed. While I may not totally love slogans, I really dislike acronyms. Acronyms are the worst kind of inside baseball. They are so ubiquitous, that often, we even forget we’re speaking in them*. If you’ve ever worked in a nonprofit or started a new job anywhere, then you know what I mean. There you are, sitting in your first all-staff meeting, everyone talking fast, and you realize about seven minutes in that half of the “words” they are using aren’t even words. They’re acronyms that people are using like they are words. You try desperately not to drown in the ocean of acronyms by thinking extra hard about the context in which the acronyms are being used, hoping to gain a clue about what they could mean. But they are all coming too fast, so you jot them down with a plan to look them up later on Google.
I do not know the origin of acronyms nor slogans, and I’m not going to open up a new tab to look it up. I would rather imagine that the origin of both is somehow related to poets and/or poetry. I mean, some of the most well-known slogans—AKA wisdom sayings—come from Ecclesiastes, which is written in verse. And many of them are equally as troubling as the AA ones referenced above if invoked at the wrong time. Imagine, you’re suffering the loss of someone you love, and happy camper comes at you with “Grief is better than laughter, for when a face is sad, a heart may be glad.”
Poets, as far back as the Middle Ages, used a form called acrostic poetry, which is undoubtedly acronym-adjacent. I will never forget my all-time favorite acrostic poem by Molly Peacock, from her book Take Heart. I read it in a contemporary poetry class while in college back in the early 1990s. The acrostic reads Holding Hands In Church Now, which both centers, and adds to, the poem’s meaning. When you are not expecting an acrostic, it is even more wonderful when the “hidden” sentence, word, or phrase finally jumps out at you.
Now here’s the point of this whole post: two not-so-great tastes that taste great together? A slogan and an acronym, colliding. A slacronym. Yes, I made that up. I think. I can’t be sure though because I’m not going to open up another tab to check. A slacronym, as I define it, is an acronym that creates a shortened word or phrase that actually means, within the context of a sentence, what the full slogan intends—and more! So even when you hear the acronym/word for the first time, and don’t know the full slogan, you’ll still get it. Because always, there’s a little added something-something to really bring home the point.
(Ok, so I did just open a tab and found rapcronym coined for the rap artists who create acronyms in their lyrics. Not all the rapcronyms highlighted in the piece work the way I’m thinking of slacronyms, but one particularly good example the article gives is Common’s I Used To Love H.E.R.)
Anyway, it was a text exchange with my sister that got me thinking about all of this in the first place (this is me getting to the point…Don’t Quit Before the Miracle!). Out of the blue, she writes “I just heard WAIT in a meeting.” Obviously, I sent back a question mark. Like, ? Then she writes back,
“Why Am I Talking? I thought it was the funniest thing.”
I love this slacronym. It’s something to remember to say to yourself in moments when it is questionable that you should be saying anything at all (as opposed to listening and learning), as well as during those times when you notice yourself talking too much. If you remember to WAIT before you say something (or even WAIT while you are mid-sentence over-disclosing), you give yourself a few seconds to think about why you feel the need to say anything at all—when saying nothing could be the far better choice. Will my words harm someone? Are my words thoughtless and insensitive? Are my words additive? Generous? Necessary? WAIT—Why Am I Talking invites you to take a couple moments to better understand what you hope to gain by talking. Am I just looking for approval? Am I only seeking praise? Am I merely trying to get people to like me with the laugh, or the clever thing? Am I trying to shut down a conversation, or take over? Am I just trying to get my way?
WAIT can also be applied to writing (social media comments sections too!)—I have tens of draft posts in this substack, for instance, that I never finished because I asked myself the questions above—W.A.I.T. - and the answer was not why I write. I write to connect—and when connection is not the central motivator for what I am writing, the writing itself feels difficult, and leaves me anxious and empty. Better not to write anything at all.
Another slacronym I really love is a phrase from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous: pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. It is that bottom-most moment of a person’s addiction when they experience this vast psychic, existential pain. It is that moment when one’s actions have cost the loss of everything one holds dear—your friends and family, your esteem, your body, your material belongings, your connection to love and the human family. And much of it was, you come to realize, in some part your own making. In other words, you experience Pitiful And Incomprehensible Demoralization as your payment for your part in your bottom. You get PAID. There is an important caveat to this one: it is ONLY ever to be used when one is in recovery, or on the other side of whatever it was that took you down—because it takes a very, very long time for many of us to realize our part in our own demise, and begin healing and changing. When we share our stories once we are on the other side, it is often with humor that we talk about getting PAID—the kind of humor those who’ve experienced it and come out the other side understand as the absurdity of it all. How did we not see it then? How did we survive it? Remembering when we got PAID often brings a deep feeling of gratitude for where we are now.
Another AA slacronym I like and use a lot is Restless, Irritable, and Discontent - RID. RID is that feeling of discomfort and dissatisfaction, when you can’t even stand to be in your own skin, and nothing you do or eat or buy or binge watch can make it go away. In these moments, I usually say to my friend: I’m so 1-800-RID-OF-IT — just desperately wanting the feeling of RID to go away, like call the junk haulers! It always makes us laugh, which always helps that feeling. And laughing is the only thing you can do sometimes with RID, until This Too Shall Pass.
One more thing before I go, because I love to tie up all my threads: reverse slacronyming:
When I first got into AA, I had trouble with the praying, and all the God talk. As evidenced from the Molly Peacock poem above, I had some problems with Christianity. Turns out, this is a fairly common thing for a lot of folks in AA—and outside of it. However, belief, and spiritual connection are something we humans not only have the capacity for, but it is also something we crave. How to reconcile this desire and need with the God-options available to us can be a struggle. So, many people have taken the word god and altered its meaning through reverse slacronyming, so that God doesn’t mean that great old man in the sky, the angry authority, or whatever other unhelpful understanding of God you were given as a child. Instead, G.O.D. means what works for you to make you feel centered, connected, and loved:
Good Orderly Direction—a way of living that supports your journey of becoming the person you were always meant to become
Group Of Drunks—the people and community around you who lift you up and love you
Get Out Doors—the power of nature to make you feel connected
This last one is especially helpful to me. Trees are a wonder.
—MBF
*I actually wrote this sentence this week: FYI, CEC’s RFP for a VPP. Then I cried a little.
No words or even slacronyms for the originality and truth here. Love this whole post.