One of my favourite poets, TS Eliot penned:
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
TS Eliot in Little Gidding from Four Quartets
And next year’s words await another voice.
This week, in particular, I’ve been conscious that the words we use shape what we see.
We may want to imagine a new normal, but if we are still using yesterday’s words we will struggle to break free.
Words are wonderful. Yet they are overlaid with meaning. Some of which we can’t see.
However, they affect us all the time. Limiting who we think we are and whom we believe we can become.
Ever so slightly…
So if we’re going to open up the conversation about what we want to leave behind and what we take with us into tomorrow, we need to help each other hear the vocabulary that currently frames us.
We need to engage our minds and our hearts in this endeavour with gentleness, creativity and clarity. And combine it with the generosity and grace that must accompany such an important joint-venture.
This is a new path we are making.
It wasn’t here before. And some of us wondered if it would even come in our lifetime…
But it is here. Now.
Let’s tread wisely.
Thanks for reading
Sue
This week
Has been a journey – new paths, new sightlines and new questions. Where are you having these kinds of conversation?
- Monday: Seeing and being seen
- Tuesday: Fresh paths
- Wednesday: Looking the other way
- Thursday: Shifting our view, changing our language?
- Friday: We’re always creating paths…