Words – Just What Do They Mean Anyway?

Yesterday I wrote a post that included some words that made me flinch at the time I typed them, and again every time I went back over the post, editing and proofing, before hitting the “Publish” button.

The words I wrote are these:  “… Being off the road is killing me.  Killing me slowly but killing me all the same.”

I’m a fairly positive person, normally, and I don’t say things like “that’s killing me” because most of the time, it really isn’t killing me.  In fact, it isn’t even close.  I don’t even want to allude to something killing me because I believe words are self-fulling prophecies.  (More on that a little later.)

But every time I read these words yesterday, I realized that, yes, I do feel like my cells are dying when I’m not on the road, so, yes, it is killing me.

As the weeks parked in one place stretched into months, and the months into almost a whole year, my “on the road” adventures more or less came to a stand-still.  I don’t sit still and I’m not unoccupied, but traveling is what I want to do and wandering is in my DNA, so as I’ve stayed in one place, week after week, it has begun to feel like I’m slowing dying inside.  Of course, the answer to this is to get back on the road and I’ve already started those preparations and I’m excited about getting back out there but before moving on, I just wanted to say a few words about yesterday’s words.  If there’s one thing I know for me, it’s that the words I use to continuously talk to myself work better for me if they’re positive, up-beat, excited, and complimentary.  I don’t always get words like that in the conversations in my head but I aim for as many as possible.

So that’s that.  I believe the words we tell ourselves are what form the world around us.  When we’re constantly complaining, bitching about the traffic, the President, the grocery store clerk, the weather, we get more things to complain and bitch about.  Try complimenting that clerk on the color of her shirt, or getting out a rain coat and walking in the rain anyway, or turning off the news reports of whatever is happening in Washington DC today, and see if things don’t start to brighten up around you.  I know it works for me, and if it can work for me, it can work for you.  Try it!  You just might like it!