Saturday, January 18, 2014

The magic of words....




I love words.  I love the way they look, the way they are spelled, the way they swirl around in your brain, the way they trip off your tongue when you say them and especially how some words find a special place way down in your heart and live there forever.  Words can be awesome on their own or when they are strung together to make a phrase, sentence, paragraph or story.  I believe in words.

Words can be uplifting, inspiring, life-changing and unforgettable. Words can give us hope and a reason to live.   I still am blown away by words I can remember from my childhood as I memorized a poem to recite to the entire class many, many moons ago.  To this very day I can recite that poem verbatim, not one error, perfect.  But even more amazing is when the retro radio station blares out its songs and I can sing...word-for-word...all those golden oldie tunes without one glitch (well maybe one, don't want to brag here).  The downside of words can be their negative impact on life.  Words can humiliate, lie, deceive and even destroy, which just shows the power that is buried deep inside of each and every one of them.  One must be careful when choosing words to use,  both for yourself and for others around you, because words can have a profound, lasting impact and can change a life forever.

It is so much fun to be a collector of words as some words are tailor-made just for you.  Maybe you've noticed that sometimes when you are reading certain words just seem to jump out at you and attach themselves to you.  They bring you get happiness as you roll them across your tongue, process them in your brain causing an involuntary smile to burst forth on your face. I have been a collector of words since I was a little girl.   One of "my" words is the the teeny, tiny, snappy little word .... "nap".  Yep, three letters that bring comfort, joy and a dreamy feeling of peace when I say it out loud to myself.  I can envision me with a good book, a warm blanket, a cup of hot tea and my bed.....makes me yawn right now just thinking about that little insignificant word. To so many it is pesky, irrelevant, and meaningless but  to me it is a loyal friend.  Daily I hunt for words that are meant to be in my private "ME" dictionary.  I seek them out like I would the square carmel-filled chocolates in a brand new box.  I  chew slowly letting the caramel melt and my tastebuds have a party and then I swallow happily and purposefully, internalizing those words forever.

If you stop to think about it we all have favourite colours,  places, moods, fashion sense and food (just to name a few) that are very unique to us....we own them.  It would be fun to compile your own list of favourite words and go over them savouring the feelings of how you respond when you say them out loud.  Some words just sound beautiful laced together, like Lavender Lines and the Beatles, Marmalade skies.....very poetic and they flow together so well.  In school I always loved the rippling sound of the word "onomatopoeia."  It rolls and moves across your tongue reminding me of a happy little bubbling brook moving carefree towards the sea.  I like to keep my eyes and ears open to how words around me sound, the colours they paint, and how they resonate in my heart, and then I joyfully try to glue them together in new and fun ways.  Words matter.  Words can be sorted to create brilliant books for us to read or organized in a carefully thought out speech that can end a deadly and destructive war.  We can never underestimate the power of words and never stop searching for the next word that is ours to claim and celebrate with.




Read on and read always!  Have a great Saturday everyone.

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