More dog-walking inspiration 🙂
I was thinking tonight about how much power exists in our words. If being a shaman means we have the power to alter reality then our words make us all shamen or priests or prophets. For our words can inspire others so that their lives are turned around or wound them. I guess in some ways I reiterate the ideas in the song Children will Listen from the play “Into the Woods”
Lyrics
Careful the things you say
Children will listen
Careful the things you do
Children will see and learn
Children may not obey, but children will listen
Children will look to you for which way to turn
Co learn what to be
Careful before you say “Listen to me”
Children will listen
Careful the wish you make
Wishes are children
Careful the path they take
Wishes come true, not free
Careful the spell you cast
Not just on children
Sometimes the spell may last
Past what you can see
And turn against you
Careful the tale you tell
That is the spell
Children will listen
How can you say to a child who’s in flight
“Don’t slip away and i won’t hold so tight”
What can you say that no matter how slight Won’t be misunderstood
What do you leave to your child when you’re dead?
Only whatever you put in it’s head
Things that you’re mother and father had said
Which were left to them too
Careful what you say
Children will listen
Careful you do it too
Children will see
And learn, oh guide them that step away
Children will glisten
Tample with what is true
And children will turn
If just to be free
Careful before you say
“Listen to me”
Children will listen (repeat 3x)
Definitely a lesson that I keep learning with Zev. I make mistakes from time to time and speak from anger or from frustration and it gets hit home very quickly my power to wound or to heal
But then we all have that child within us, that vulnerable character who can hear things that inspire us (sometimes just to keep on keeping on, sometimes to reach heights we never dreamed of) or crush us. People we love and sometimes strangers work their verbal magic on us as we work it on others.
As speakers, let’s use our magic to build rather than destroy. By this, I don’t mean to say that everything we say has to be positive, honesty plays a part in this too, at least I believe it does. It strikes me that as communicators we could do far worse than trying to honour the expression “First do no harm” .
As listeners too, we have power and responsibility also. We all have the ability to take what another person has said to us or within our hearing and twist it to our own ends, using these words to either wound ourselves or justify any maner of outrageous behaviour.