A picture is worth as many words as it takes to describe it

I'm beginning each day with a picture. Not necessarily a recent picture, but some visual of my world, no matter how small. I think visual aids are nice, don't you? Today's is Shollenberger park, a place I discovered by writing about it here in town. A man-made place that attracts multitudes of birds because they are smart. On their way from one land mass to another, they look for watering holes to rest, water up at and get some grub. They don't particularly care if mother nature carved it out for them with patience and time, or if a bunch of dudes in hard-hats tossed tons of silt from the river into a big dry hole and let the rains turn it into a wetlands. They're easy that way. Which is cool, because I like to walk with the geese and the blackbirds. I like to pause to let a duck family pass ahead of me on the path.

Say Yes with me...

So I've been thinking about words in terms of how they affect us, positively or negatively. Have you ever noticed your reaction to certain words? Sometimes a word makes you cringe (like words with hard consonants or words that conjure a bad image--corpuscle, casket, perineum) or inspires your ire? Sometimes you like to say a word for no good reason, or because it flows off your tongue nicely (I like words with g's in them: lugubrious, gregarious, galactic).

I don't think we've fully investigated how the words we use and hear affect us. Or perhaps I should say that I haven't. I'm starting to. For instance, in meditating last night I found my mind wandering more, and the discomforts of my body more distracting than usual, and I reached out for something that would help comfort, still and calm me. For some reason I pulled in the word yes. Each time I said it in my mind, my body lit up with ripples of pleasure. Not THAT kind of pleasure, more like my cells were all saying yes with me, were embracing something, were saying yes to being alive. Think about the word yes...it is already approving of something. It has a willingness to it, it requires almost no energy to say it and it's a word you don't say very often unless you mean to. It's hard to say yes reluctantly; when you do, you regret it. It shouldn't be squandered. So I just continued to say yes until I felt like all of my cells were in approval of themselves, of meditating, of being part of a body that is part of a universe. And then I began to wonder what other words would give me this wonderful feeling. So I tried some out. Try it. Seriously. It's mind-blowing; because the result now is that yes is a mantra I can say to calm myself, to fill myself with energy and instant positive energy. All that in a word.

I think we each could develop our own little lexicon of powerful words to use as ways into positivity, or as creative openers or as reassurances. We see language as a form of communicating with others, but I'm starting to understand how to use it to communicate better with myself, to access parts of myself and transform them.

Don't worry, I haven't adopted a spiritual-sounding moniker yet. I'm still me.

JPR