Every year I wait with eagerness for the Oxford word of the year. The 2024 word is rage-bait; content deliberately designed to provoke anger and outrage. And honestly, it fits with the state of the world today. Rage travels fast. Rage grabs attention. Rage is profitable.
But here’s what I’ve learned – especially walking beside people facing illness, loss, and life-altering news: Rage may capture attention, but it doesn’t grow anything. It spikes our nervous system, but it doesn’t deepen our wisdom.
So I’ve been sitting with a different question: What is the opposite of rage-bait? Not silence. Not pretending everything is fine. For me, the opposite of rage-bait is meaning-bait.
I saw this embodied recently by a dear friend, Susan, who learned that her myeloma had spread beyond the bone marrow – a rare and frightening development called extramedullary disease. She could have collapsed into anger. She could have asked why me again. Anyone would have understood.
Instead she breathed, she prayed and turned to face the new challenge head-on. And when I asked her questions to learn more, she patiently took the time to share and teach.
Her response wasn’t denial.
It was courage. Her diagnosis didn’t soften. Her fear didn’t disappear. But her stance shifted. She refused to let fear become the loudest voice in the room.
A few months later, Susan learned she was going to be a grandmother. Devastation and joy. Grief and promise. Arriving side by side. Isn’t life like that? I witnessed her incredible, exuberant, unending, pure joy at receiving this news.
So if life is giving you something unbearable and something beautiful at the same time, let this be your reminder: Joy still arrives. Hope still sneaks in. Promise still finds a way into cracked places. We don’t get to choose what shows up. But we do get to choose what we feed. Susan is choosing to focus on her family.
The world has enough rage. .
What it needs are people, like my friend, willing to choose depth over outrage, presence over performance, and meaning over noise.
So here’s the question I’m sitting with – and maybe you want to sit with it too: Where in our life are we being invited to choose meaning over reaction? And what are we feeding – the rage, or the grace?