Words with Friends

WORDS WITH FRIENDS

“We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes; but the plural of ox became oxen not oxes.  One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese, yet the plural of moose should never be meese.”

We all know the feeling when we try to say something with a specific intention and it either comes out the wrong way or is misinterpreted.  I certainly do.

I have this ‘thing’ that often confuses a conversation with someone I love dearly.  It is like a pit I occasionally fall into.  This ‘pit’ is a habit, a pattern of behavior I know is there yet it trips me up all the time.  There I go, down that same old rabbit hole.  Those are my “I did it again, time to slap myself on the forehead’ moments.  Sigh.

My habit, like all habits, is based an archetypal pattern.  It rears its head when I hear something this special person in my life says and then I react emotionally to what I think he said rather than taking a few seconds to digest it and understand what he really meant. I know without a doubt he would never say anything to hurt my feelings; and yet I stumble.  It is that old reacting vs responding thing again – and again.

The soul uses images to share its wisdom, so once we know how to translate the imagery there is no confusion about what it is trying to say.  That is not the case with the spoken word.  The English language can be quite puzzling.  We do need to be careful using it.

How we say things can be inspiring, puzzling, hurtful, misleading, and sometimes just plain funny.

I can speak from my soul and it can be profound; but if I speak from my soles I have talking feet.  If my hair stylist has a sudden attack of shear madness I get a wild haircut, but if she has a sudden attack of sheer madness does that mean she is crazy?  My husband was raised on a farm, they used it to produce produce.  Really.  He really was raised on a farm and they really did produce produce.

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on. If Dad is Pop, how’s come Mom isn’t Mop?

All joking aside, it is wise to choose our words carefully and to  listen just as carefully before we react.  Responding is a much better option because once we react we can’t unsay or unhear something.  We can’t unring a bell.

“The art of communication lies in listening”