Tag: Love

Words Worth!

Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity.

 

“Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.”

 

“Words—so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become, in the hands of one who knows how to combine them “!

 

We take the stage. The spotlight is on us. There is a great opportunity calling. Our words- it can connect, engage, open up possibilities, create progress. With the audience. Or, our words- could severe, distance, delink us from moving things forward.

 

Just an arrow that has left the security of the quiver cannot be retrieved, as is so with our words. So measure our words, use them for respect, by respect and with respect. Love is life in search of words, and words are wings that lift us, break us, join us, melt us, like rain.

 

The person in front of you keeps the door open for you as you enter behind her. You say ‘ Thank you ‘ and she responds by saying ‘ No Problem ‘. Nothing wrong with that. Except, that it may convey that the good deed she did of keeping the door open for you was a huge hassle but she did it nevertheless. A better expression of words could have been ‘ My Pleasure ‘. After all, she had a choice, and she chose to do this work precisely so that it could have an impact on someone else, in this case you. The story we tell ourselves about the work can be fuel for finding ways to do it better.

 

 

If culture and community are the bedrocks of our existence, then hospitality and connection give them the wings. Words are like loose canon. You can choose your words. But you cannot choose the effect they can have on people.

 

To quote from some wisdom of the past- ” Don’t use words too big for the subject. · Words are sacred. · Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit— YOU choose “.

 

May I direct you to this article from BrandKnew that just may dovetail into what I touched upon above.

 

ENDS

How Steep Is Your Love?

Please pardon me if the caption of this blog post sounds comfortingly familiar to the Bee Gees classic single ” How Deep Is Your Love “. Inspired? Yes, absolutely.

 

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”

 

It shouldn’t be such a difficult thing to do, but, yet it is.

 

How to love yourself.

 

One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others.

 

There will be times when you will be feeling lousy about your state of mind, your over-fifty body, your hair, you see yourself as too fat, too this or too that..it’s a rabbit hole that we all go into.

 

Yet you fantasise about finding someone who would give you the gift of being loved as you are. Contrarian, isn’t it?

 

It is silly, isn’t it, that you would dream of someone else offering to you the same acceptance and affirmation that you are voluntarily withholding from yourself.

 

The word ‘ love ‘ is most often defined as a noun. But, it is worth altering the trajectory. We would all love better if the word love is used as a verb, rather than a noun.

 

The ask here is: could we proactively offer a new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness– not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, unity ?

 

People are divided by our society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love.

 

Should we be razing the cultural paradigm for a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and society?

 

Definitely so. Count me in!

 

As Katrina Mayer puts it, ” Loving yourself isn’t vanity, it is sanity “.

 

ENDS

 

 

Attention Piece!

It is said that attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

 

The poet J.D. McCatchy captured this essential fact beautifully in his observation that “love is the quality of attention we pay to things.”.

 

It’s a no brainer. Before we can create anything worthy of other people’s attention, we have to learn to manage ours.

 

Our world is the outcome of what we pay attention to. Period. Attention is the currency of achievement.

 

Being present is the best present we can give ourselves. And to others. There is a curious power in being present. When we are present, we see the other person more clearly. We communicate better. We make lasting connections.

 

Unfortunately, in our always on, go-go-go world, being  with someone who is fully present and therefore offering attention is rare.

 

Good work and great art comes from deep focus and deep work. Our ability to be prolific, create art that resonates, that strikes a chord , tug at the heartstrings and hit people in the face with a crowbar depends on our ability to focus.

 

Consider for a moment the kind of mental world we can construct when we dedicate significant time and attention to deep endeavors.

 

“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer,” Simone Weil observed as she considered the relationship between attention and grace at the peak of her short life. “Attention without feeling,” Mary Oliver wrote a generation later in her beautiful elegy for her soul mate, “is only a report.”

 

It’s hard to carve out time and space for work or art that matters if we’re always distracted by things don’t.

 

So, how much art have you made today?

 

” I truly believe that everything that we do and everyone that we meet is put in our path for a purpose. There are no accidents; we’re all teachers – if we’re willing to pay attention to the lessons we learn, trust our positive instincts and not be afraid to take risks or wait for some miracle to come knocking at our door “. Marla Gibbs

 

ENDS