Words

I am always amazed by the power of words. Every time I strike a letter with a hammer into metal letter stamp, it is a strike I can't take back. Straight, crooked, upside-down or rightside-up, that letter is forever emblazoned onto the metal beneath it.

Words are the same way. As soon as they leave our mouths they become a sound rather than a thought. We no longer have the intent to strike. We have stricken. The words may heal or encourage or inform or they may hurt and slander and villify. The older I get the more I appreciate the art of listening rather than talking. Of being the metal rather than the hammer and of deciding what I want to do with the words that are impressed upon me in life. I can look at them as imperfect and crooked or misspelled. Or I can choose to perceive them as quirky and one-of-a-kind explanations of someone else's outlook on life. I can take them any way I want to no matter what the intent behind them was. I can convert bad into good and good into bad. I am an alchemist of words. Really, when it comes down to it, I am the one who has to live with the words that leave me and the words that enter me and the only words I can choose to process any way I want are the ones that come in. And I welcome them all.