Live in the Verb: The Difference Between a Noun and a Verb
One of the things I had to learn is the importance of living in the verb. I see it happen so many times in my life and in the life of others. You may have experienced it or maybe you are currently experiencing it. So, what is it? It is the need you feel to rationalise and label the tension in which you have found yourself. You sit and ponder for too long, looking for nouns that will explain this state and allow you to connect with others in this state. Harsh! I know, but it's true. And many of us have been there. We do not judge you.
Living in the verb is a phrase I tend to throw around (I do not remember where I picked it up) to remind myself to stay in a state of being or doing. Instead of staying in a state of knowing or abstract as I like to call it. Abstract, because often what we think we know is only our perception. The noun therefore is a description of the perception we have of ourselves and others. It causes you to move from a state of doing and being to a state of knowing and internalising something that is possibly not true for you.
Nouns v Verbs
Nouns are typically used as a subject, object of a verb or preposition. As you are aware, nouns come in various forms, such as abstract, countable and uncountable nouns. Many people are fixated on the name of person, place or thing nouns and forget that nouns can come in other forms. This means that if you are not careful you can fall trap to nouns that perpetuate your self-sabotage. The self-sabotage comes in the form of labeling and labelling is very important in our human psyche. By labeling ourselves with abstract and uncountable nouns (mainly) without realising it, we are giving a name to our current tension and rationalising an existence that was never meant to be permanent. We exist in states, different states throughout our day, month, year and life. By giving prominence to the noun and allowing ourselves to identify with the tension for too long a period of time, opens us up to the world of self-sabotage.
We see it in the current society, where people are looking for labels (nouns) for almost everything. Every symptom must be named so that treatment can be administered. Every quirk must be explained. By living in the noun, we stay put, pondering on the labels, feeding the abstract and forgetting the verb. In this state, we often do not accomplish much, because it is a state of knowing. And the knowing may not be true for us. Therefore, we sit with labels that neither sevre us nor encourage us to move forward. Often you may feel stuck at this point.
The verb, in my view, is the state of being and doing. It is this state that as humans we were expected to exist in most of the time. In this state we see possibilities and improve our lives. Looking back to our ancestors, if they didn’t ‘verb’ they didn’t eat. The same is true for many other aspects of their lives. Fortunately, they did not sit and spend too much time finding labels, but got into action and conquered. Conquered the fear within themselves, the self-sabotage and the never-ending feeling of procrastination that many of us battle with daily. Only in the verb could they have accomplished these things and so in the verb we must spend most of our time.
Being in the verb, is not void of philosophical thought and pondering, for ‘think’ is a verb. Instead, being in the verb, requires us to look beyond the perception that we have of our current situations and see ourselves as more than the labels. It requires us to rephrase our circumstances in the verb and spur our creativity. It means therefore that someone who has encountered tension in business and utters “I am a failure”, sees themselves in the “I am” (verb) and not “failure” (noun). It requires us to think constantly of the circumstances we find ourselves in and interrogate how we view said circumstances.
[Noun: a word that is the name of something (such as a person, animal, place, thing, quality, idea, or action) and is typically used in a sentence as subject or object of a verb or as object of a preposition. - Merriam-Webster
Verb: a word that characteristically is the grammatical center of a predicate and expresses an act, occurrence, or mode of being, that in various languages is inflected for agreement with the subject, for tense, for voice, for mood, or for aspect, and that typically has rather full descriptive meaning and characterizing quality but is sometimes nearly devoid of these especially when used as an auxiliary or linking verb - Merriam-Webster]
Where Do We Go?
You may be wondering where do I go from here? First, I want you to understand that nouns are not bad. There are numerous good nouns. Verbs are not all good. There are numerous bad verbs. Do not leave this article thinking that one is better than the other. They all play a role. The key is to understand your need to label things, your unwillingness to challenge your perspectives and your constant state of knowing. And to move to a state of being and doing. To a state where you focus on the first half of the sentence and not the second. For the noun only colours your fears, while the verb unleashes your inner most desire to live beautifully.
[This is an article I published on Linkedin in 2022]