What a difference a word makes!

What we say has power to affect others and our experiences with them. And the words we choose to describe ourselves and our situations determines much of our experience!

Are we…

• rich or temporarily blessed,
• lonely or enjoying solitude, or
• struggling or growing through resistance?

We know that… well-educated isn’t the same as smart, talents are different than skills, and learning is not the same as education.

Words may seem similar but be noticeably different in what they mean (and how they are perceived!)

In his Meditations, the Stoic philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius repeatedly played with language and logic this way. Multiple times he tackled the concept of change (something that scares most of us) by rephrasing it as…

• a new beginning,
• a form of growth, or
• the natural transition from the old to the new.

Words are like maps in that maps are representations which by their very nature have to generalize, distort, or delete information. (think ‘chair’ or ‘good’) Simply put, words are not the objects that they describe. Language is a miracle of abstraction that tends to get mistaken for reality itself.

I’ve written before that the map is not the territory! And that the power of our perspective is critical.

Change…alter…transform. The meaning of our experience depends on us and how we decide to label it. And those labels are completely subjective.

We can choose to transform any negative energy into an aura of “possibility.” It is our perception that will make the difference in the way we feel.

I’m for transformation! Choose some four letter words you prefer to use and experience I choose words like calm, love, care, help, save, give, life…

What would some of YOURS be?

You don’t have time?

We will NEVER have “enough” time. Because we can’t “have” time. Time is not something that can be had by us humans. Time isn’t even real! It’s just something we humans created to make our lives more convenient. Time is like a handful of sand…the harder we try to grip it, the more it slips […]

Faith is trust?

“Faith” is trusting the process. We know that SOMETHING is making our heart beat right now, our lungs function, the grass grow, and the planets spin. So whether we admit it or not, what we have is FAITH. We have faith that our heart will keep beating and that we’ll wake up tomorrow morning. We […]

Vacation complaints…

Vacations are a national tradition (as is this perennial childhood complaint!) This post is of actual complaints received by “Thomas Cook Vacations” from dissatisfied customers. I think you’ll be as amazed as I was by them! “We booked an excursion to a water park but no one told us we had to bring our own […]

The “gift” of our breath

The phrase “take a deep breath” is misleading. The breath isn’t something we can just “take.” Breathing is a gift, a miracle, offered to us over and over again. Yet much like our health, we often take it for granted right up until the moment we no longer have it. “Remember to breathe” means remembering […]

July 4 humor!

Bringing you some humor for this special day of days. (And if it seems like it came from one who used to be a teacher, well, you’re right!) Father William, the old priest, made it a practice to visit the parish school one day a week. He walked into the 4th grade class, where the […]

The tide does come in!

No matter how bad our current situation appears to be now, nature guarantees a turn for the better. Change is always happening. Nature’s cycles are dependable. We can’t rush a seedling; pulling on it to make it grow faster will cause it to die. We can’t rush a baby; whevever possible, we have to let […]

A child’s story…

A little girl in second grade underwent chemotherapy for leukemia. When she returned to school, she wore a scarf to hide the fact that she had lost all her hair. But some of the children pulled it off, and in their nervousness laughed and made fun of her. The little girl was mortified and that […]

No pun intended?

The pun (also known as paranomania) is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term for an intended humorous effect. You can decide if you think these are funny or just punny! Writing my name is cursive is my signature move. I lost my job as a stage designer. I left […]

Which will you choose?

Before Thomas Jefferson said it, Epictetus (the Greek Stoic philospher) said that every situation has two handles-one that is an effective way to bear it and the other a way that is unsustainable. We choose, he said, which handle to grab. We choose whether we will try to see the best in people or the […]