Words

Up to the sky pose
watercolor, watercolor paper

how you climb up the mountain is just as important as how you get down the mountain. and so it is with life, which for many of us become one big gigantic test followed by one big gigantic lesson. in the end, it all comes down to one word. grace. it's how you accept winning and losing, good luck and bad luck, the darkness and the light. – from Philosophy line (Amazing Grace)

Words are so important. We use words to communicate how we feel.

Sometimes we are good at choosing words to express ourselves, sometimes not.

In the heat of a moment words pop out of our mouth in stream of conscious fashion. We often regret the low road we allow ourselves to take, but we have said it. Delivered words like physical blows.

In that moment, we change time, we change energy we change the direction a relationship can go.

Have we healed, hurt, given pause for reflection, connected? learned something new, created a possibility for a stronger bond or not?

How has the recipient received the words used to express a feeling, a thought, an observation. 

This sharing of words to express emotion is the most trickiest part of human development and psychology (I think):

We perceive others actions from our point of view based on what previous interactions we have had in our lives.

My ex-husband was a zero to sixty kind of guy – shooting first asking questions later.  There was no middle ground with him.  He would tear you to shreds and I mean shreds then and only after time had passed would he realize perhaps he was incorrect in his assumptions,

And still he wouldn’t apologize.  I just walked away from that. I will never understand what makes him tick like that, but it isn’t important for me to try to understand anymore.

What did I learn?  He wasn’t the man for me.

I try to never let someone catch me off guard that I might spew words that can harm.  My mother did that to me, I couldn’t of been more than twelve, but I remember the hurtful words she said one day about me in a dressing room.  It is something I still won’t repeat.

Mindfulness is a word that comes to mind when I think of how I try to be. Direct. Clear when there is a problem. 

The skill I have learned is to reflect back the words that are being said to me. To understand the other person’s point of view, to see the place where they are coming from.

Words are an important tool of communication.  I often find it easier to write them down, it helps me think clearly and then say them.

Words I like alot:  Grace, peace, love, harmony, continuity, healing,Higher road, genuine, focus, discipline, truth, joy, compassion, equanimity, laughter, smile, do no harm.

We can use our actions to heal or hurt.  We can also use our words to heal or hurt. Which do you chose??