As writers, we choose our words carefully. We labor, sometimes for days, over finding the right words to complete a paragraph, a page, sometimes a single sentence. We know that a single word can change the meaning of what we’re trying to portray.
Everything rides on the words, and we use multiple resources to find the right ones. I, myself, own a seventeen year old, twelve-hundred page Roget’s International Thesaurus that I refuse to give up, and I can spend an interminable amount of time flipping through its pages, hoping to stumble across that certain verb or adjective dancing on the edge of my mind just out of grasp. For some of us, finding the right words can be like finding buried treasure, and it’s with a sense of elation that they spill from our thoughts to our fingertips to become a part of the fabric we’re weaving.
In a way, today, we are all writers. We’re inundated with the written word. Social media has flooded our synapses with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and we spend our days tweeting, posting, commenting, and sharing. The screen in front of us affords us a certain degree of anonymity as we broadcast our thoughts and opinions, sometimes to thousands of people.
We are so careful when choosing the words we write, but are we as careful when choosing the words that we say?
Gautama Buddha said, “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think.” There are many who believe this to be true, myself included. But if it is true that we become what we think, what, then, of the words that we speak?
We’ve all, by now, heard some version of the Law of Attraction, like attracts like, what you send out to the Universe is what you get back. Of all who have written about this enduring theory, and the many different names it’s been given, the consensus seems to be that we are all energy, and that by whatever we think and feel, we send this energy, these vibrations, if you will, out to the Universe, and we attract more of these same vibrations back into our lives.
This principle holds true not only for the thoughts in our minds, but also for the words we speak. With every spoken word, we are declaring our intentions to the Universe and asking it to return more of the same. In this way, we are truly authors of our own lives. But what of the lives of others? What vibrations are we sending out when we speak, and how do these vibrations affect the people around us? Whether or not you believe in this particular phenomenon, I think most can agree that the words we say often impact others, sometimes in a profound way.
As inundated as we are with social media, it’s a wonder we haven’t become completely impassive to all we see and hear. The truth is that words have power. They can heal, but they can also hurt, and at some point, we have all been on the receiving end. So, what can we do to guard against this?
Maybe, first, we can learn to choose our own words more carefully. What would happen if we all chose to speak words of hope and encouragement? What would the fabric of our lives look like if we took to weaving it with messages of kindness and grace? How would these vibrations affect the people around us, and how would they come back to us?
If it is true, as Buddha said, that our lives are all intertwined, then, surely, the
Universe would bestow upon us all a gentler, kinder place. This would be of benefit to all, and it can begin with us simply choosing our words wisely.
It would seem that, at the end of the day, the story that is for each of us to tell, that of our lives, comes down to not just the thoughts that we think, but also, whatever we say.
M.C. Greene
(Photo by Frank McKenna)