Words

Recently a friend and I were doing a poetry exercise. It was a great way to expand my mind and creativity. To find new avenues for word play. 

My friend was stuck on a portion and was searching for the right word or phrase to illustrate her emotion.  I was giving her suggestions based on what I knew about her life and what she wanted to convey.

“I don’t like that word.”

“I don’t want to feel like that.”

“I hope it’s not me.”

We chatted a bit more about her goals with the poem and I again suggested the same words. As she began to protest I had an interesting thought come into my mind. How we limit our lives with words. We use them to curate our image or our mood. We label them good or bad or right or wrong based on our interpretation.  I am talking about common words such as lonely or orphaned or solitary. To me they are simply descriptive of how someone is feeling in that moment. They are not written in cement nor do they have to define the person using them forever as that, but that is not how my friend saw it.

That is when I thought about the limiting aspects of language.  All of us have words we would rather not have attributed to us. We do believe that they define us, but do they? Words are expressions of opinion or description.

Rich – Married – Angry – Tall – Sad – Mean – Single – Inept

There is nothing that says we have to believe that the word describes us to a T, but they might be useful to another person hearing about you or trying to understand you. When expressing ourselves our goal should be to communicate as clearly as we can about the topic at hand.  If you write or say you are feeling lonely that lets another person know your status. It does not make you forever alone. It simply conveys the situation at hand.

Then my mind veered off (as it so often does) to how we limit our communication with others. We do not want them to think we are the words we do not like, but how else do we share our feelings if we cannot use all the words. Or to put it another way, use words that the people we are talking to would best understand. The label or charge on the word is mostly ours. What we believe it to mean or how it feels to us. So, if we parse every word down to some meaning that makes us feel better, safer, less vulnerable how are we allowing the world to know us?

I will have to get back to you on this topic as I have too many words I am currently reviewing to get my point across. Until then – just blurt it out and see how it goes, but remember Mercury is in retrograde.