Echoes we mistook for gods!

Say what you mean. Get the language for the life you want.
Doing just that, by culling rotten phrases,took me a while.

I was in school when the first god cast a shadow over my pathetically small worldview.
“You need to,” he began. I can’t even remember what I needed to do,because every day, the requirement changed.
But I believed him.
He was a grown-up. He reeked of aftershave and authority, especially when he pulled up in his fully tuned muscle car to visit my parents. That smell lingered longer than his words.
I heard he retired a few years ago,faded into obscurity.
The god was gone.
But the need, that ever-shifting commandment,echoed in my skull long after.

Through the years, many other gods crossed the threshold of my existence.
Some offered words that genuinely helped,mentors who placed my anxieties in perspective and moved me toward steadier ground. Those are the echoes I captured in hardcopy, lest they be forgotten.
And then there were the bosses,self-proclaimed gods, dullards wrapped in suits, mistaking compliance for leadership.
There were family members and friends too, dispensing advice and derision with equal enthusiasm. Not all were gods, but most worshipped at the altar of their own clichés, clutching their beliefs like sacred scripture.

I used to imagine gods in the echoes,all-knowing experts, voices from beyond.
But now I see them for what they were:
detached reverberations, bouncing off walls, hollow from the start.

The echoes linger, yes,but that’s fine.
They’re just reminders.
And reminders are useful:
even gods fade
when they never had anything real to say.

So ask yourself,What will you adhere to?
What will you believe, when the echoes finally go silent?

Each day, I still hear the clamoring of those echoes,some ancient, some freshly minted by modern-day bullies.
But I have changed. My language changed.
I began slaughtering banal language,words that no longer served me, only carried hurt, or lived on as mindless habit.

Now, boldly,if not always bravely,I step into the noise. I deconstruct, rephrase, discard. I examine each echo, not for what it claims to be, but for what it is.
Some language still rings true. But not all of it.

Recently, I heard an old, familiar voice,an echo from a narcissistic prototype I once knew. I watched others grovel at his feet, feeding on the spilled slop of his entitlement, nodding at his word salad as if it were prophecy.
I just walked past him.
Instead of lingering to absorb hollow echoes, I just walked by, and got a damn good Americano from the café down the hall.

This is not just a challenge, it’s a call to defy the old gods
of tired, banal language.
And more than that, it’s an invitation.

Let’s speak without echoes.
Let’s begin something real.

MATT