Typos are a Guru

Surrendar to the Magic

It’s been brought to my attention (many times) that this newsletter has typos. If you haven’t noticed any, good for you! And if you have, good for you too. But if you thought I didn’t know, I do.

Sometimes I see them and fix them (or don’t); sometimes I don’t see them, but someone else does, and I don’t fix them, and…either way, I don’t care all that much.

I’m not trying to “run a tight ship” around here, I’m captaining a heartfelt vessel through the waters of meaning amidst the holographic storms of wordplay.

Typos are orcas breaching in the distance, drawing my eye to another depth of field; Typos are chimera — sirens calling me home. Meaning is everywhere, least of which is literal.

“Good for you, little buddy,” I think; this typo is a survivor. They made it to the outside world.

But it wasn’t always like that.

You couldn’t catch me dead with a typo a few years ago. So when they started appearing in my writing, at first I was shocked and amused. “Me?? a typo? LOL wow.” Typos groveled at the other end of the spectrum at which I’d placed myself for so long - above them, naturally. Smarter than them.

For a long time, typos, to me, were signifiers of failure, whether mine or someone else’s. A 100% pure mistake that revealed any number of dark and uncomfortable truths: laziness and/or rushing, an aging mind, eyes, or fingers, or perhaps being ill-informed or uneducated. An unintentional stain on whatever image you were trying to project.

Typos were terrifying reminders that we’re messy, monstrous, and mortal beings. (but we are?!)

Typos goad us into being tattletales for the perfectionism of white supremacy (or the AP style). I’m not saying all typos matter, I’m saying that the deep wisdom lies in our reaction to them.

With self-satisfaction and — truthfully — smugness, I’ve caught many typos in my day (always easier to catch someone else’s, of course!). You hear that “no body likes a know-it-all,” but you must assume that everybody dislikes typos more.

Me, a truffle pig, rooting out typos like truffles.

The mistake our minds make is assuming we can outsmart ourselves.

And yet for something so many of us seem to fear and disdain, we simply cannot get away. They knit us together in our imperfect humanity. Typos, truly, are a spiritual guide.

I am a recovering perfectionist and recovery is a lifelong pursuit in a white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy (bell hooks). I hear people say all the time, “I’m a recovering perfectionist.” Really? Prove it. That’s not very nice to do to someone in recovery, but still, I think, show me your typos…

Some categories of typos*:

Homophone Home Typo, or same same but different. Like when someone rights “to” when they should or mean to write “too” and you’re left wondering, [scoff] do they know the difference? And then you’re grappling with whatever judgment and assumption you’d like to foist onto that situation. Never mind that you know what they meant. Do they??

AI Overlords Typo, or damn you autocorrect. When they tiny alien programs in our phones or computers override our clumsy fingers or intentions (OR channel what we really mean) and replace a word for us, which we either catch or don’t catch, or catch but don’t care, before sending a message. Lust = list. Ducking = fucking. Thong = thing. A favorite one recently is a friend who meant to call me “dearest” but wrote “dreariest.” Yes, that’s me! How could this technological “advance” reveal so much more of the soft, silly underbelly of language, forcing us to work even harder to say what we mean?

Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing Typo, or magic eyes. When someone points out a typo that you completely missed. And you’re amazed that your perfect, highly detail oriented brain missed it. These can play on optical illusions. These typos don’t really disturb the flow of the syntax - your brain has it handled. But they’re sneaky little buggers. And sometimes biggie buggers.

*There are so many typo permutations and derivatives. New mutations emerging all the time. Please add others into the comments below.

What’s the word for when you spend your life caring so much about a certain thing (being liked, getting it right, being thin, being cool, having no typos, etc. etc.) that that thing become a prison for you?

And you grapple with that, because you know, deep down, you’ve created your own prison with this thing that isn’t actually real and you just want to be and feel free and contribute toward others being and feeling free. And not like in an annoying ‘la la la everyone is equal and gets along kind of way’ but in an actual, messy, reconcile injustice, letting go and showing up kind of way.

And then all of a sudden one day you notice one or two of the bars from your prison cell are gone, because you don’t care anymore about that one thing, and you poke your head way out and take a DEEP BREATH?

What’s the word for that?

The typos kept appearing and like a big wave they rolled me over. I let go and tumbled into the surf. Exposure therapy. My reactions to them kept softening.

I realized they were happening because I was creating in a different way. I began to see them as little buds on a tree in Spring — byproducts of my new, emerging creative process. I set my voice free and the typos came out to play.

I realized, with surprise, that I didn’t really care. I didn’t feel that gripping. Aside from a typo that might be disrespectful or cause harm, or completely obliterate the meaning I was trying to convey, I could co-exist with them. I hoped, and assumed, that people would still know what I meant. That I cared. That I poured my heart in. I realize that’s a privileged assumption.

I still noticed others’ typos but began to see them not as signifiers of failure, but as glimmers of lightness. Signifiers of personal, spiritual evolution. Like, damn, that person really has bigger and better things to care about. Good for them. And I know what they’re trying to say, anyway.

Other things typos are besides mistakes or failures:

Invitations to play / to say oh well / to say whoops.

Reminders of our humanity - pushing through, sometimes despite our efforts.

Opportunities for evolution / revision.

Meaningless, pointless accidents.

Fat thumbs.

Opportunities for empathy and consideration of others.

Trapped doors for bouquets of new meaning.

Challenge to our assumptions and rigidity.

Typos are evidence that words play. Language is so f’ing brilliant. Minds play too. We can get our tongues twisted and we can also know precisely what is meant by a typo-riddled piece of writing. We’re never all on the same wavelength, we’re just using language, imperfectly, to try and bridge the troughs between our waves.

Organic genetic mutations, or typos, in nature. Beautiful.

Breathe easily.

Life is like an auto-sterogram, aka a Magic Eye poster. Except instead of a 2-dimensional image that has the capacity to appear as a 3-dimensional scene, life is 3- maybe 4-dimensional with the capacity to be experienced much more multi-dimensionally. But you have to let your eyes rest and re-focus, to let go of your gripping for that to happen. As Ram Dass said, “you can do it like it’s a great weight on you, or you can do it like it’s part of the dance.”

Meaning is everywhere: literal, figurative, energetic, spiritual, random... Nothing is certain, nothing is static. We aren’t all zipped up, and no one is.

So, hey, if you find a typo in something you’ve written — even if it’s in 800 high-stakes expensive printed annual reports that you’re responsible for and have had proof read four times and you feel like you want to sink into the floor (speaking from personal experience) — its OK!

Maybe welcome your typos like little easter eggs in a hunt; or Wonka bar golden tickets. You can revise them, but also co-exist with them.

Catch your typos not like you catch a cold or a crook, but like you catch a cut throat trout in a cool rushing river or a foul ball at Citi Field.

They’re evidence that you’re human, and that language is playful, and we never have it all under control — even when we think we do. Life is short, but it’s also long, and you absorb and portray many, many layers of meaning. With your heart, perhaps more than with your words, people feel you and know what you mean.

• Work 1:1 with me: A number of ways to do this. I’m working with social justice leaders to hone audacious thought leadership strategies and cultivate and elevate their voices. I’m closing my books in August for a little while, so reach out if you’re interested!

• Yoga IRL weekly at Love Yoga in Venice and the Santa Monica YMCA.

• More writing.

• More snooping about me.