Attention & Focus · “You Become What You Hold”
Speaking Without 'It'
To dissolve the habit of treating the living world as objects (‘its’) by speaking to and of it as kin — retraining attention and felt relationship so the world becomes alive, addressable, and worthy of praise.
Speaking without “it” in 4 lines: For a year, try never to say “it.” Address the world as kin — water is “My Mother,” the sun is “Father,” people are “sister,” “Auntie.” Each dawn, face the sun and greet it: “Father, it’s good to see your face. Good to feel your breath again,” and give a small gift. Go slow; let the changed speech slowly change how alive the world feels.
What it is
Martín Prechtel argues that modern people are lonely and destructive partly because our language objectifies the world: everything that is not a human “I” or “you” becomes an “it” — a thing to use.
His remedy is a concrete speech discipline: for a stretch of time (he suggests a year) try to stop using the word “it,” and instead address the living world as kin — the sun as Father, water as Mother, people by relational terms — and to greet the sun each morning with eloquent words and a small gift.
It is an attention practice disguised as a grammar rule: change how you speak, and how you attend and feel shifts with it.
The Method
- Drop the word “it” for a set period. Prechtel’s challenge, verbatim: “If you just try to speak for one year without using the word ‘it.’” He gives examples: “a baby colt wouldn’t be an it. A baby child wouldn’t be an it.” The constraint forces you to find a relationship for everything you’d otherwise dismiss as a thing.
- Address things as kin, not objects. Replace “it” with a relational name. Of water: “We see water, call it My Mother. You don’t even use the word ‘water’ in front of the water.” You speak to the thing in its presence, as someone, not about an object.
- Use kinship terms for people, not just names. Address people by relationship and age — “Hey, sister,” *“Oh, hey Auntie”* — rather than reducing them to a bare name. This extends the same de-objectifying move to the human world.
- Greet the sun every morning, with words and a gift. Prechtel describes the daily practice: “When the sun comes up in the morning, everyone kneels — man, woman, child, or they go out and give a gift.” The words he models: “Oh, Father, it’s good to see your face. Good to feel your breath again.” So each dawn: pause, face the sun, speak to it as Father, and offer something (a few words, a bit of food, a gesture) — a small daily act of praise.
- Go slow and let it work on you. Prechtel is explicit that this is not a quick fix: “It’s got to be slow. It’s got to be gradual.” Work patiently with language (and, he adds, food and music) to shift consciousness over time. (Sourcing note: the quoted phrases are Prechtel’s, from the For The Wild transcript. The five steps are a faithful arrangement of his stated instructions into a practice. The metaphysics behind it — a reciprocal, fed world — runs throughout his books.)
Source & Lineage
Martín Prechtel carries the Tzutujil Maya worldview of Santiago Atitlán, where the living world is addressed and fed through eloquent ritual speech (“the old language,” the indigenous soul).
The “speak without ‘it’” challenge and the sun-greeting come from his interviews and teaching (For The Wild Ep.
- and pervade The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic (2012) and his school Bolad’s Kitchen. → (Prechtel entry). It is an animist-relational practice, not a self-improvement technique, though it functions as one.
The Traditions' versions
Buber’s I–Thou — the contrast between treating the world as It (to use) versus Thou (to meet) is almost exactly Prechtel’s grammatical move.
- Animist address — Indigenous traditions worldwide that speak to rivers, sun, animals as persons (e.g. the “grammar of animacy,” Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass).
- Morning solar devotions — Surya Namaskar and Gayatri to the sun, dawn prayers across faiths; daily greeting of the light.
- Gratitude & savoring practices — deliberately attending to and naming what is good.
- Loving-kindness / relational framing — extending kin-feeling outward.
Common refinements
Treating it as mere word-swapping. The grammar rule is a doorway; the aim is the felt relationship behind it. If you say “Father” to the sun with no attention, nothing shifts.
- Expecting instant change. Prechtel insists it must be slow and gradual — give it weeks and months, not a day.
- Forcing it socially / sounding affected. You needn’t lecture others; this is largely an inner discipline plus your own dawn practice.
- Skipping the gift. The morning greeting includes offering, not just speaking — even a few words given rather than performed.
- Perfectionism about “it.” You’ll slip constantly; the catching-yourself is the practice (it’s where attention re-engages).