A word on the lost words … a deep sea diving acquaintance was lamenting the absence of interest friends showed in her underwater videos. Where she was looking for awe, in our digitised world we’ve seen it all before.
“Great,” they say. “Awesome.” Yay.
I too am among the guilty (although I refuse to use the word awesome for anything less than awesome). So I put down her phone, and ask her to tell me about her time among the antiquated turtles.
No longer staring at me staring at videos, she brings me into the world of dark water and ancient marine life, transmitting the relational experience of being human in an alien world. Now I am interested. Mesmerised even. Engaged. Awed. Feeding into a loop of rich human exchange.
Our world is awash with images. And words. The tech billionaires call it content. They call us content consumers. There is a price for content consumption. The price is our words. Our own words. The lost words.
And the price of our own lost words?
Our silence. And in turn the silence/silencing of others… until so few of us are speaking anything at all of meaning, to ourselves or others, that it takes courage to speak at all.
What is it you mean to say when you emoji-like and heart and wow and hug? Where are your words? Your reflective, thoughtful words that write yourself into the world.
Trusting our self expression in writing involves risk.
This is why writing is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.
Speaking through writing the words that express our responses to digitised life pins us to a page like butterflies on a wall. Much safer – and quicker – to flick off a like, a heart, a wow or hug.
We pay the price for our lost words in our living – not our digitised living, our actual living.
Fear has pride of place in this story … the harsh light of others’ judgement. Risk too … our precious words potentially misconstrued or ignored.
I’m acting like I know shit, and I actually do. Every single person of the 2000+ who have attended the workshops or participated in the research showed up on behalf of a haunted longing to find their own words.
This requires trust.
Trust necessitates we find our own words. Not the story-words we tell repetitively to make sense of our living, seek approval, or shore up ourselves behind a barricade of performative nothings – our actual words, the ones that line up with who we know ourselves to be.
And this I promise you, the lost words are not in your head. You’ll find the lost words in your body. The lost words are your words. They are your originality. Your courage. Your visibility. Your voice.
Language the feeling body and you will language your life. Content producer. Content creator. Lifeworld communicator.
Besides, the underwater diver with the camera sitting right beside you is worthy of so much more than a thumbs up when she risks sharing her precious efforts. As are we all.
Trust us, you’ve got this.
www.iwwi.com.au
