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The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their rightful names. —Chinese proverb

When what was once predictable is nowhere to be found …

When what you thought you knew to be certain now appears blurred and distorted …

When what you were holding that seemed solid now dissolves as dust in your hand …

Then you have arrived at a place on your journey whose name you need to know.

Each of us is offered powerful moments when life invites us, or perhaps quite dramatically forces us, to stop and pay attention to who we are, where we are, how we arrived there, and where we need to go next. Sometimes these moments of awakening manifest as the coming to a crossroads on our path, when we are presented with a choice to turn this way or that. Sometimes, rather than a distinct moment of recognition, we experience these changes as a gradual transition that we slowly or suddenly become aware of, even though it may have been happening for a while. And sometimes there is nothing at all subtle or gradual about these moments—they reveal themselves to us in the form of dramatic wake-up calls, emotional or spiritual emergencies, events or circumstances that force us, ready or not, to face a reality we would rather not face.

No matter how we encounter these periods of intense questioning or difficulty, one theme is the same: our world, which was comfortable, safe and familiar, now seems foreign and even frightening as events, either from inside or outside us, shake up our old beliefs, our usual ways of existing, relating and behaving. We look at the challenges stacked up before us and suspect that we will not be able to survive this time with our “old self” intact, that we will not be able to find our way through the dizzying maze of emotions with anything less than total, brutally honest self-reflection.

“What is happening to me?” we wonder. We have arrived, unmistakably, at the “here” in “How did I get here?” but where exactly are we? This is not simply a rhetorical question, but a sincere and urgent cry of the soul, a longing to identify these unfamiliar experiences that fill us with fear, confusion or uncertainty. We really need to know what is going on. We need to give it a name.

From the earliest recorded times, human beings have had the desire and need to name things. Scientists say that language is the very thing that makes us human. There are 6,500 living languages in the world today, with many more that have died out. That means there are billions of names and words in existence. Estimates of the number of words in the English language alone start at around three million and go up from there.

What is the purpose of all these words? The traditions of many ancient peoples and religions believed in the power of the word or name to bring things into being. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” says the Christian Bible. In the Hindu tradition, AUM is the sacred symbol that is the source of all existence, the cosmic sound from which the world arose and within which the world exists. In ancient Egypt, it was essential that the parents name their child as soon as he or she was born—otherwise it was as if the child did not exist. To name something made it real. This belief is still an integral part of modern culture—we already have more than enough words, yet we continue to create new ones as we experience, identify and name new realities—in the English language alone, we still invent up to 20,000 new words and terms a year.

In ancient times, since names were so important, it was believed that to discover the name of something was to gain power over it and control it: to know the name was to possess the thing. Thus in many cultures the names of deities were kept secret and never revealed. Early writings about the magical arts declare that once a magician knew the name of a thing, he held the secret to its magic. In other traditions, to use the sacred names, as in the recitation of mantras, was to empower oneself, to take on the qualities of the name of the Divine, and to achieve liberation.

In our own lives, we’ve all had experiences of the power that naming has to define things and actually shift our experience of them. There is a big difference, for instance, between someone you are dating, and someone who is suddenly named your “boyfriend” or “girlfriend.” Now, the relationship is “official.” Of course, it becomes more so when the “boyfriend” is renamed “husband.” You enjoy working for a company, but when you are named manager or assistant vice-president, you suddenly feel more important, and you proudly carry business cards with your new “name.” Even unpleasant circumstances became more tolerable when they are named: Your son who does poorly in school, loses his temper with his siblings, and can’t seem to pay attention may be seen as a “problem child” until his symptoms are properly named, and he is diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. Now you know the cause of his behavior—it is no longer an exasperating mystery—and you can get him the help he needs.

Names help us to locate where we are on our outer and our inner journey, and to identify who we are. When we are entering unknown territory, encountering unrecognizable landscapes, or arriving at unexpected turning points, we need those names the most.