Welcome to Root Words. I'm Michelle Root and on this podcast we will embark on a
journey of self-discovery while appreciating the complexities of
language through etymology, the study of words. Each episode we will explore
the origins of a specific word, how it can influence our spiritual, mental,
physical, and emotional well-being. I want to help us dive into the
intersections of language and life so we can contribute to a common understanding.
Let's uncover the power of language together. One word at a time. This is Root Words.
Welcome back to Root Words podcast. My name is Michelle Root and today we are
going to be exploring a rather intense word I wanted to start this episode off
by expressing that this will be passionate, this will be full of times
why I will interject my own personal perspective about the situation. So in no
way do I expect anybody to feel like they have to agree with anything that I
say. These are all my own words and how I feel about things that are happening in
the world around us and I think it's important to differentiate when you're
listening to someone and understanding their perspective while holding your
own versus listening to someone feeling like what they're saying is being
imposed upon you causing you to feel like you have to change your perception or
your opinion of something. So that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm sharing my
own understandings and personal perspectives with you in addition to
supplying you with facts about the word itself. As I research each of these words
it helps me expand my own comprehension and awareness of how inaccurate some of
my interpretations of these words we cover are. Of course I'm trying to dig
deep but it's not just to provide something for you guys it's to find
something myself that I can use. So I say all that to say listen with an open
heart and mind take what works for you leave what doesn't and understand that
this episode is very important to me and there may be some that resonate heavily
with this word that we're going to be covering today based on all the things
that are happening in our world that we can see all around us. I know the term
empath has been overused a lot on social media and in the world nowadays but being
truly empathetic leaves me in a position where the incidents occurring
around the world currently have left me deeply impacted on a soul level where I
am unable to ignore or pretend or minimize what is happening around us
right now and I'm also very aware of the coping mechanism that a lot of us
utilize just to get through the chaos that is happening in our lives and in our
world we can shut down and focus solely on what we can control and I totally
understand that and sometimes I wish I could utilize that more often. There's
times where I can let the pains of the world go and focus on my own internal
and immediately external environment regarding my family and friends and my
community but on a larger scale when it's so consistently chaotic feeling and
turbulence throughout the whole world it gets very hard to repress after a time.
With all that being said I find it necessary to focus on a word that will
contribute to honoring our fighting spirit as human beings and also support
our desire to defend what we feel is right. In many aspects of life from belief
structures and political alliances to societal issues we all understand the
importance of defending our position and standing on our own individual morality.
Staying true to the values you hold close even if you find yourself doing it
alone can feel daunting but also very necessary to live in alignment with
yourself. Living a life of authenticity can be very isolating at times and can
sometimes leave you in opposition to the norm around you. This can also gain
you the label of an outcast black sheep or disruptor. Despite these labels when I
see or hear something that disturbs my faith in humanity I have to vocalize
it. I don't know how to internalize things that unsettle me and oftentimes I
find myself screaming into the void of social media to anyone who will listen.
Within my words I feel I am able to exert some small act of disruption and
resistance. Some may find venting on social media laughable but they also
seem to forget that one small act can change the trajectory of many things.
Disruption is the precipice of change and if things stay the same there can
usually be no progress. In nature one down log can redirect the flow of a
raging river. One boulder placed within the path can alter the direction of all
those who encounter it. A tornado is the ultimate disruptor, uprooting everything
in its path with reckless abandon, causing those affected to rebuild, revise, and
reinforce their homes to withstand an even stronger force next time. Within
disruption there is transformation. Today's word is the ultimate disruptor.
It can represent the action taken by many who stand shoulder to shoulder with
each other, hoping for a more beneficial existence. We are tired of corruption,
war, and famine. We are sick of witnessing the suffering brought on by greed,
corrupt governments, and political figures. As our planet slips further into
destitute we can feel extremely limited on options to change the trajectory of
our fate. Every news outlet around the world broadcasts the pain of humanity.
We can't seem to escape the grasp of relentless suffering at times, but there
is one thing we can do to gain footing and a sense of sovereignty when we feel
the proverbial and literal boots on our neck. Resist. Be the log, be the boulder,
be the tornado, be the disruption when necessary in a haze of our business as
usual reality. A defeatist attitude has never served anyone any good and
owning the word resist gives us a certain level of power within our own
actions. If there is to be some form of change or transformation within society
or even within our own personal lives we have to be willing to be the
resistance when called. Let's get into the origins of the word, learn about some
well-known acts of the word resist, and find ways to explore the essence of the
word to honor our spirit of rebellion. Dictionary.com identifies the word
resist as a verb meaning to withstand, strive against, or oppose. The origins of
resist was first recorded in 1325 stemming from the Latin roots of
resistry which means to take a stand or withstand. The word identifies an act of
defiance against something else such as a virus becoming resistant to the effects
of medication or child resisting their parents instruction. It is a very diverse
word in the sense that it fits within many contexts. Despite its flexibility I
personally can't help but associate it with societal issues in this day and
age. Almost 700 years after its first usage we as a species still utilize and
resonate with this powerful word that encapsulates the essence of our need for
defiance. I feel as a species we have always stood up to things we felt were
inhibiting or jeopardizing our evolution and growth whether it be unconscious or
subconscious. To me this shows how deeply the spirit of rebellion is within
our human experience. We have always taken upon ourselves as a species to
defend our right to exist, our right to speak out, stand up for our own survival
and our own families and I don't think that any group of people on this planet
has not ever taken an opportunity to defend themselves and speak up when
they felt like their people have been subjected to injustice and oppression at
any level. Now for obvious legal reasons I am not encouraging anyone to create
trouble for themselves. How you interpret this word and how you understand it is
up to you and you take responsibility for any consequences that may or may not
come. So again to cover myself I am not telling you to do anything. I'm simply
asking you to open your mind to understanding the importance of
resistance in all aspects of our lives whether that be on a large scale or
interpersonal scale in your own life. I found it so ironic how today when my
husband and I were looking through Instagram we saw footage of farmers in
France protesting the conditions set forth by their government where they
were ignoring union standards and the farmers revolted. They ended up taking
their crops and dumping them on public city official buildings so I found it
very ironic that while recording this episode I would come across examples of
the word resist. I will use the word resist and resistance interchangeably to
conceptualize what points I'm trying to make here. Currently in 2024 we are seeing
an uprising of people around the world standing up for the people of Palestine
who are experiencing a genocide at the hands of the IDF. From the streets of LA
to Belgium you can see thousands of people resisting the narrative that news
media is trying to force upon us. We see uprising in support of the crisis in
Congo as well as they are also experiencing a genocide due to the
ongoing conditions of slavery of both adults and children alike for cobalt
mining. Despite some of us living far from these atrocities people all over
the world are showing both big and small acts of resistance from boycotting
companies that support these regimes that perpetrate violence to writing
senators hoping to encourage change in the upper echelons of government. Sometimes
it can feel fleeting and I've seen online many mock these efforts as having
little effectiveness. I find that doing something is better than doing absolutely
nothing at all so if you feel like you're in a small corner of the world
and your impact does not matter just know that doing something again means way
more than doing absolutely nothing and complaining online about others who
actually do do something. Some other famous acts of resistance in history
are the underground railroad where figures like Harriet Tubman and William
Still led enslaved people out of the South via a system of checkpoints along
a safe route that led to the north. In 1715 the indigenous Yamasi tribe who
were located in northern coastal Georgia formed a confederacy with other nearby
tribes and forced invading colonial settlers to flee which had a devastating
impact on the economy of South Carolina at the time. During the Holocaust of
Jewish people in World War II many resistance groups stood up to Nazi
Germany and would revolt against the regime armed with only weapons and
sheer bravery. When I think about these acts in history I often imagine these
people that are in these situations fighting for their families and for
what they feel is right feeling that their odds were stacked against them but
knowing internally within their souls that what they were doing was the right
thing and they could not stand and face themselves knowing that they had not done
everything they could to defend themselves and protect their honor and
their families and their legacies and I can't imagine being in a position where
I had to fight for myself so hard like that so the utmost respect is given to
anybody affected by any of these atrocities mentioned I just simply
have so much respect for the people that fight day to day just to survive.
Sometimes the luxury of living in different parts of the world allow you
the privilege of ignoring certain things and being blind to someone's everyday
life so while you listen to these words and you understand the need for standing
up for yourself and your family understand that of course while we're
all free to have our own perspectives and our own hardships we always know
that there's someone out there that is going through something ten times worse
that helps us put into perspective how blessed we truly are but that does not
negate how an oppression or something that would cause the need for resistance
that does not negate that experience no matter where you are it's just important
to know that we all have things going on and we all deserve compassion and
empathy for the struggles that we face individually and as a whole.
Now that we've talked about resistance on a grand scale I like to focus on ways
that we can enact resistance on our own personal lives by sharing moments where
I needed to resist societal pressures as a child growing up. I was raised in a
suburb right outside of Seattle and as a biracial girl I hung out with many
different groups of people I was always being forced though to identify with
either one race or the other and I learned early on that when you're biracial
you're not allowed to choose your own identity the world absolutely chooses it
for you. The second you speak up about your right to claim both sides of your
DNA you're met with shame and ridicule and are sometimes mocked on both sides
for who you are trying to be. What was crazy is I never claimed to be anything
other than exactly who I was and as I grew older and more comfortable with my
identity I realized that at the end of the day it doesn't matter how society
defines you you have to resist these labels and you have to truly be okay
with defining yourself. It drove other people nuts that I was outspoken I wore
fishnets and plaid I listened to rancid and black street and deaf tones and
Snoop Dogg people lost their minds due to the fusion that they felt was occurring.
My existence represented an abomination to some and even to this day despite all
the quote-unquote progress we've made in this country and outside of it people of
mixed race are oftentimes targets of unique types of discrimination coming
from both sides of their ethnicities. You truly can't win so do whatever the
hell you want honestly. Even as a young child I understood the importance of
standing up for myself standing up for what I liked standing up for who I
felt I was as a person versus what society wanted me to be. Being by
a racial has offered me a unique perspective of what it means to stand
in your identity and claim who you are individually. The pressures of society
can have you feeling insane when it comes to who you're supposed to identify
with what you're allowed to like and not like and even as a woman what kinds of
things are you supposed to be doing based on the bullshit stereotypes placed
upon us. I feel like people use the words outcast black sheep and dissenter as a
way to categorize the people that they cannot put into boxes they cannot
compartmentalize and safely classify you so it just is easier for them to label
you as an outcast rather than to understand you. Another area where I
feel like the word resist can be utilized is within something I've seen very
prevalently online and in real life lately is a lack of boundaries in
interpersonal relationships be it romantic partnerships friendships between
parent and child or even co-workers. Now why is this important? Boundaries are
everything boundaries are ways of forming barriers around yourself to
protect from harm abuse or mistreatment even sometimes between loved ones where
you need to draw a boundary to protect your sanity in your space. You might need
to say no to things that might be expected of you to do in order to
preserve your mental health sometimes you might need to turn down invitations to
another person because you're not feeling up to going out or doing whatever
activity it is that they are asking of you and just remember those that
understand you will respect your boundaries and understand why they are
drawn in the first place. If you ever feel like someone gets upset or angry with
you for establishing a boundary that is definitely a relationship that you need
to assess further because resisting anything that goes against your need
for self-care is not something that should be viewed negatively. Projecting
expectations placed on you by society and forming personal boundaries are both
acts of resistance and I think it's very important to focus on the fact that
resistance can be good or bad it can be a good thing and a bad thing it is not
discriminatory in that sense you can be resistance to changing something where
you need to change you need to put focus on something and remove the resistance
so you're able to progress and advance in whatever it is you are being resistant
to but on the flip side as I've stated and as I've touched upon within this
episode acts of resistance and defiance can be for positive change so
resistance and resisting something can be utilized in either a positive or
negative fashion how you choose to utilize it is up to you so while it is
important I believe to honor the sense of rebellion and resistance within
yourself it is also important to use discernment to know the difference
between when you are actively standing in your own way and something else is
hindering your progress if you yourself are blocking your own blessings through
a resistance of sorts it is time to take self-evaluation and identify the areas
where you are holding yourself back I feel we all can have habits and
addictions and patterns that stall a simple fun as from elevating and
advancing to higher levels of growth which is absolutely imperative as we
carry on throughout our lives we just consistently say the same as I mentioned
before there's no room for growth or progress it seems to me a good rule of
thumb is to know when to apply and release pressure on aspects of your life
either push harder or get out of your own damn way so I feel like for myself
some personal homework that I'll be doing after making this episode is
figuring out the difference between the two while I feel that the subject of
resistance can be carried on for days I'll leave you with a quote from Roman
historian and politician Tassius he stated that a desire to resist oppression
is implanted in the nature of man if you take anything away from this episode
today I want you to never forget that it is your right and your duty to stand up
for what you believe in for if you don't do it for yourself no one else will I
want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining me today on this
episode please stay tuned for next week's episode where we dive into the word
dichotomy and explore the division and contrast between two opposing concepts
or ideas understanding duality helps us have a full spectrum of perception when
making decisions in life understanding conflicting perspectives of others and
also identifying contradictory concepts you might hold within your own self
again thank you so much for joining me I'm Michelle root and this is root words
you