Which quotes inspire you? Do you have a favourite; one that really resonates with you? I read one a few days ago, on the wall of a treatment room at the Seven Wellbeing Centre at the Butterwick Hospice. I’ve seen it before but this time, it stayed with me:
People may forget what you said but they will aways remember the way you made them feel.
Fans of Maya Angelou will recognise it’s a modified version of words that are attributed to her, the brilliant American civil rights activist, poet and author. (If I ever get asked the, ‘If you could choose five people, dead or alive, that you could dine with, who would it be?’ question, then she would definitely be one of my five).
Like many of her quotes, it’s memorable because it is so true. When I think about certain situations, although I can’t remember verbatim what a person may have said to me, I can always remember the way they made me feel. The feeling might have been a lovely one or one that made me feel uncomfortable; one that made me feel happy or one that made me hurt.
Our words to one another carry with them so much power. The tone we use, our choice of words and the way in which we say them, create a physical and mental reaction within the person we’re communicating with, creating feelings that we can’t touch or see but which nonetheless are very real. Powerful stuff.
Reading that quote last week, made me think about how our words can change someone’s whole day and how they feel about themselves. On that theme, I thought I’d share some words of my own in the form of a poem (because it’s National Poetry Day!).
Here goes:
Word is ‘drow’ spelt backwards,
A drizzly, mist of a thing.
A word on its own can mean nothing,
Or it can mean everything.
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Words can create our emotions;
Can uplift, support and inspire.
They can make our day, or break it.
To the former, we all can aspire.
Laura Ashurst
28th September 2017
lauraashurst.com 