In the final hours before turning 33, I was revisited by a nightmare I’d not had since I was a child. And that has been an appropriate metaphor or analogy for the past year: that of the mare. A sort of specter that visits us in dark moments and puts weight on us, bodies or mind (or both).
For myself, but also many of us, 2025 was something to just survive, and I did, if barely. And moreso, many of us have been embroiled in a sort of long-term “noia” or “phobos” about the social and political climate(s) we exist in.
And in being trained on the words that come to my discipline from Greek, these two are the ones that seem to fit most closely with my lived experience: “mind” and “fear.”
‘Noia,’ apart from ‘psyche’ or ‘psuche,’ standing in mostly from ‘paranoia,’ operates as a kind of “misappropriation” of thought or “thinking wrong” about some item or idea.
And ‘phobos’ being vaguely “fear” or something to be afraid of. A relation statement where the “other thing” is the source of our fear. ‘Xenophobia’ is the most relevant one, here.
I joke, but lately I feel a sort of chronophobia as I move forward, persisting, which is plainly irrational. But maybe I’m just aware of my own age, position in space, or the social parameters “33” operates in—I’m at the end of my early thirties. Or maybe none of those, and I’m talking out of thin air. And maybe I’m just more aware of my own body, which is political, and political bodies in which I operate, which both change substantially through time.
But, with all of that set up, I perennially move to thesis: I am worried. Not so much of or about time, but of how commonly fear and mind are integrated into and intertwined within the discourse of our (collective) health, not even as a people, but as a quasi-state or proto-state. In another word, I am afraid (‘autophobia’).
This is—very likely—going to move into an “old man shouts at cloud” <insert GIF> sort of territory, but I do think we’ve largely lost the ability to speak with each other and reflect on our selves. Politically, religiously, communally or inter-communally, whatever. Because of how I’ve seen identity politics and politics of identity move in my lifetime, I guess I’m feeling a kind of nostalgia. But that nostalgia is pointed at a time when I do think society was better at coexisting, or minimally the coercion was less explicit. Maybe things have always been this bad, and we’ve lost a sense of public decorum that might not have served everyone to begin with. We accepted difference, and when at impasse, moved beyond it to find common ground. But that commonality can also erase or not support difference. If we are all “A” we lose some “B,” “C,” and “D.” I am thinking primarily of Burke here but going a step beyond.
I also acknowledge that, in terms of self-actualization and learning argument, I’m coming out of a place of deep and incredible privilege. I got started on the Attic Greek texts as early as sophomore year of a fancy, private, expensive, Catholic preparatory academy. Then, I was trained dually on theology and politics, as well as global history, literature, places, and ideas. I then I went to two of the premier instituti0ons for studying rhetoric and philosophy in the States. I am blessed now to be employed, working beside one of them to continue supporting the student population that I was a member of, historically not that long ago.
And I participate in a lot of very rich traditions of celebrating difference in ideas and civics (read “civics”-pre-Limbaugh, et al.). But in terms of thinking of both keys and gates, there are a lot of checkpoints between true access and where most of my students start. I foresee that I will be at this work for the remainder of my life, but I’ve been thinking about my values related to ‘noia’ and ‘phobos.’ I may well be incredibly naïve about how to move from close-to-zero to the pinnacle, and I am critically aware that for some students that is a gentle slope and for others it is a precipice, but I do see myself as being at the work of guiding students up that grade, cliff or otherwise. It’s not intuitive. But if no one is at work doing that for others, we’re going to be in a worse society with deeper problems, despite the ones we have already being entrenched and deep-rooted.
But as a close colleague and now personal friend of mine has said recently in presentation, “there are a lot of socioeconomic factors” that might point toward “alienation narratives” or imposter syndrome, or expectations that they don’t “fit” into the broader academic space. But also, if we don’t commit to the work we are already doing (where ‘we’ is a heavy operator of in-group identity markers of “humanities and social sciences academia”) then students will stop to move forward with us. And in some or many ways, I’m taking the time this year to reflect on what is working well in our professional or educational space, while being mindful of what is not in the interest of students’ and citizens’ successes. I was blessed to be sent by my college to the Texas Conference on Student Success in 2025, where Archie Holmes and Kyle Clark spoke ad nauseum about us recognizing what we are already doing well. There’s room to grow, but we move forward by thinking about failures, barriers, gaps, and success.
But I see the work that I am doing, that my friends and colleagues are doing in Texas and beyond, and my supervisors, mentors, and other faculty and staff are doing, and that brings me to my word for the year: pronoia.
If I understand enough about the concept and the way the neologism works in English, I take this to mean a kind of “the universe has your back” in most or all things. Or to put it in a different way, there’s a lot of work to do, but it will get better and generally, we’re trending upwards. Change needs to happen, and now things are both violent and suppressive, but it beings—and continues—with us, but we are already at that work to identify problems in communication, rhetoric, and education more broadly, and we get up every day to face our students and our administrators, and our administrators and the public. And more recently in public in Texas, it is scary as hell, but if we do not or if we leave, others will take up that mantle, but while we’re here, we have good to sow.
It's hard, but we show up, and we double down on the idea of justice and equity across difference, not indifference or ignorance. I see that, I value it, and I think the world does, more broadly, as well. That is the pronoia I am opting to believe in this year and years moving forward.
But that is also to say, we have to show up for the vulnerable and those who need support. When someone steps in my office or my life, or when they step in yours, you don’t ask why they’re there or what they should have done differently, but we are there for those people—their station irrelevant to any of that, aside to inform our approach or to begin to triage.
Love your people and get up to good trouble. But see that we are already at work doing good. I already see it.