I have been a tutor for many years and frequently hear students trapping their potential growth and happiness through their repetition of cul-de sac words, whose word pools are stagnant and can rarely sustain healthy life.
Word pools littered with words like ‘always’ and ‘never’ and ‘can’t’ Word pools where hopelessness and helplessness are declared as final, absolute truths, a even as transcendent givens.
It takes courage to change perspective, to risk changing the ‘tools’ that have served so powerfully for so long.
For example:
- ‘I always find this or that hard.’
- ‘I can never speak in public or say what I mean.’
Or even that sinister favourite of all of us:
- ‘I tried that and it just didn’t work.’
Trying anything seems an acknowledgement of failure. There is something half hearted and doomed about trying. What are we actually trying on I wonder?
- What happens when we promise to try?
- Where is our focus?
- What is our premise?
When I read Mary Oliver’s poem Moccasin flowers earlier today I met her ‘mossy hooves of dreams’ and marvelled. How can anyone resist the words?
They capture a freedom and wandering, wondering imaginative excursion into a world where new relationships can be enjoyed between anything.
- No rigidity here.
- No railtracks.
- No mancicured hedges!
Flowers( and I hope us too) feel free and natural enough to open ‘pink lungs’ and breathe FIRE!
Such word pools!
