The Alphabet
a wee hours of the morning insight
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
I did not sleep the other night, not much anyway, 3 hours to start and then 4 awake, then an hour and a half before waking to the light even though I have tried to darken my room.
In those hours I thought about so many things – mostly about trying to find the most viable way to deliver content I have created that is vitally needed but not yet out into the world where I envision it landing.
.As I was hoping to get back to sleep, I started breathing in/breathing out and counting one with each inhale/exhale – inhale 1, exhale 1, inhale 2, exhale 2 etc. I heard that suggestion from a Buddhist monk. It might have worked one time but not this time.
Next, I counted as fast as I could to 100 and starting again at 1 – not out loud, of course. The cat would choose “out loud” to mean I was extending to her an invitation to wake up for more petting.
When silent counting at warp speed did not work, I tried to slow myself down.
The first verse of an old hymn showed up, as it does in wakeful, worrisome moments. A decades long musical imprint. While in an expanded place in my faith, if I am ever in solitary confinement, I am sure old hymns will come to mind. This one says, “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll – whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. It is well (bass sings it is well), with my soul (bass sings with my soul) – it is well, it is well with my soul.”
No sleep arrived as the tune ended.
It was after doing Wordle at 3:30 AM that I decided to try saying the alphabet.
However, instead of putting me back to sleep, I began to think about the 26 letters in a completely new way.
I of course learned them by someone teaching them as out loud sounds when looking at the shape - A, B, C, D, etc. – I learned to name them with sound, so I see them, understand them as sound, even when reading silently. Many phonics lessons.
I never, until the middle of that night, thought of each letter as a symbol nor do I believe anyone ever spoke of them as a symbol, a particular shape like the shapes of “letters” in other languages.
Recently, someone who is studying Japanese showed me the symbols that make up that language. She showed me how they are used in a writing exercise she was doing and spoke about what some symbols mean. Perhaps that was in the back of my mind as I began to see A as a symbol, not a letter - two long lines touching at the top with a short line across the center.
Ultimately, in those wee hours, it moved from seeing letters in this fresh way to musing about how I combine them, configure them and the meaning I choose to give them because until I combine them, they are simply symbols.
For what purpose, what intention, what desire, what goal, what message do I string these symbols together?
What arrangement of symbols comes out in my speaking?
I know it sounds and feels like a bit of a crazy path my mind traveled before finally dozing off for a couple more hours of sleep. And yet I can’t stop thinking about this as a rather potent insight.
This is so because using the symbols, turning them into the words I choose to write and speak, is symbolic of who I am.
And oh, how many of them I wish I could take back.
Yet, in this moment I choose to arrange them to remind myself that I do not need to go to regrets.
There are too many connecting, uplifting, consoling, creative and beautiful ways to play with and configure what I am now adopting as my personal 26 symbols.