9 Word Rethink to Get On with Life

WORDS MATTER I was talking to a girlfriend about the power of words when she nodded wistfully, “This is so true, Maria. I’m triggered by the words easy and lazy when I hear them.” Something causes her to flag those words based on her history. We’ve known each other for most of our lives and those words have no specific connection to my thoughts about her. However, she has to mentally walk herself back to center when tossed off course hearing them in reference to herself, so she doesn’t carry residue from however they were hurtfully tossed at her in the past. Many of us have words like that we associate with our own pain. We can get stuck on them, consciously or unconsciously, if we don’t transform how and whether we absorb them. Words can change lives when strung together just right as subjects, verbs, and objects to convey information. Finding the right ones to express a feeling is a significant part of process. Words are weapons, but also medicine. They divide and unite human beings. Together, we don’t give it much thought. They’re easy to take for granted. Say what you have to say and move on. Words are our most heavily travelled road between each other. We hold them responsible for many trials and triumphs we face when we say something like, “Did you hear what he just said to me?!” Yet, we can do virtually nothing to control how someone uses them in our presence. Words are walls and walkways between each of us. Some people use big ones to distance attempting to self-protect and prove superiority. Others do everything they can to make sure words break through walls that separate us. Each time we use them, we communicate who we are. We get used to certain ideas about what each one means to us. We understand there are immovable definitions. We understand people receive what we say or write based on those definitions, but even at that, we know plenty of things can impact how they’re received altering what they mean such as: tone of voice, eye contact, and even silence. There are moments one measly word made the difference to the good or bad baggage you carry from your history. Some of the best memories include word use creditable to one solitary, well-placed one. Power jockeying can mean using words with loaded meaning. Relationships can fizzle when an attempt to find the right word falls flat in a less than adequate attempt to relay a feeling. I’ve conducted thousands of individual interviews throughout my digital media writing career, most of them in audio and video. It involved studying those interviews to isolate specific soundbites when someone expressed who they are, how they feel, and what they want as invisible arrows pointed toward revealing pieces of how they exist in the world. Even if someone cannot find the right words, the feeling doesn’t go away. It’s still there without exception. Frankly, it’s remarkable so many words and definitions stand after so many years, because our experiences change so drastically as human beings with the decades. Sitting in my favorite chair typing this book on my computer evokes some kind of feeling that someone writing a book with a quill pen and jar of ink might have felt 150 years ago, despite the fact we are handling the process so differently. Nonetheless, the feelings stand with nuanced shifts based on geography, age, topic, and any number of other factors that constantly change around us. How I think of writing a book is just a bit different than that author would have viewed writing a book 150 years ago based on technology alone. We use the same words to explain what is happening, but how we think about what those words mean is not the same. Thousands of new words pop up every year, but we have go-to mainstays that represent ideas we consider foundational in creating a framework of how we define our existence. SPREAD THE WORD I grew up in a family of professional entertainers as the fifth of six kids in a creative artistic traveling troupe along with our mom and dad. There was a 20-year age span from the oldest to youngest kid. My dad, Lee, was a creative leader and served as our performance ringmaster, so to speak. He ran the show as a magician and juggler. My mom, Rita, was the emotional support system for everyone and dad’s support on stage. Plus, she was wildly creative making all of the costumes and equipment covers and anything else that needed our name stitched on it. She was a gifted seamstress and I’d watch her hands stitching each letter of our last name onto various pieces of cloth as she painstakingly made sure it was all evenly cut and sewn in straight lines on the velvet, canvas, and basic cotton fabrics that made up the playful, yet wildly serious lifestyle that was our world. Each of my brothers and sisters were musicians and unicyclists coming together as a family variety show traveling all over the United States and Canada. Our regimented daily practice schedule was the baseline rhythm of our lives tucked in-between school, homework, birthday parties, running around the neighborhood playing with friends, and extended family functions. My own personal practice schedule included an hour of unicycle, an hour of gymnastics, a half hour of keyboard, a half hour of drums, and 15-20 minutes of trumpet most every day starting from the various ages I was introduced to each new skill.