Words speak me more than I speak them. Words come unbidden and flow through some mystical core that lives inside me, linking into thoughts and dreams that are exotic yet familiar. Some of the most powerful words are silent echoes of the past and future coalescing in some sacred dance.
We are told that words create worlds, the one we live in, and the ones we dream. And yet we toss and juggle our words without thought, often leaving behind swirls of confusion or regrets. Or perhaps a world that we do not want to live in. Perhaps broken hearts, including our own.
What if we knew that we were speaking the world into existence, how would our words change? What would we say to a lover or a friend or a stranger? What words would we speak in the face of challenges or successes? Would our words of gratitude outweigh words of anger? Would we offer heartfelt apologies rather than seek to justify and blame?
Each of the words we use to weave the stories of our past into our future has a color and a texture and a tone that reflects our true underlying beliefs. We might say we crave a future of prosperity or love, yet our words create a future of scarcity and loneliness. Perhaps this is why silence is a form of praise. In silence we reflect before we speak, we seek clarity before we explain, we find deep meaning before we create. Perhaps silence is where words of truth are born.
Not only is this lovely, it is thought provoking. If every word we spoke truly formed our world, our language would be very different.
I enjoy all your writing but this one is especially touching to me, thank you!
I love this blog. The challenge is knowing when to speak in love and when to stay silent in love
A single word can have the power to change culture, inspire, defeat, lay open the soul. We all have to be careful what we say. We can say something in ten seconds, but in ten years the wounds are still there.
It’s interesting that one of the foremost “experimental” contemporary composers of the 20th century, John Cage, titled one of his books “Silence”. My recent rural viewing of the meteor, in the early evenings last week, evoked deep feelings of awe and curiosity; but absolutely no words were able to describe it. Investing the sustained, reflective time while watching it was a weaving of much, and yet in today’s saturated world, would have been perceived as nothing. Nothing but total silence …. but slowly over an hour each evening, it was just a silence of words. As the cacophony of night’s sounds emerged the evening’s viewing was enriched , without the need of words, bringing a different language of life