Slow Down, Feel Your Words

One of the hardest things for people who grew up feeling unheard or silenced to learn is that speaking a lot of words now won’t make them feel more understood.

For one thing, the currency of language is like the currency of money: the more of it there is, the less any of it is worth.

On a deeper level, our tendency to talk and text too much and too fast is a way of protecting ourselves from having to feel the meaning of what we say.

The part of us that keeps rapidly and repetitively reciting the history of our suffering is the part that actually doesn’t want to leave space for sitting with the truth of what happened.

When you look at things this way, you can both have compassion for yourself and also understand the importance of quieting the storytelling mind, precisely so more of you can take up space.

There’s too much in our culture that says happiness only exists on the level of narrative (“It’s about telling YOUR story”) and that just isn’t true. If happiness were a matter of changing a narrative, you would have done so long ago.

But as my teacher says, our stories are leaves on the tree of suffering, not the roots. The roots lie in the body, in patterns of contraction and tension that keep giving birth to the same afflicted thoughts.

You have to be careful not to silence yourself. If there’s something you *need* to say, don’t keep it in! But see if, instead of shuttling between the extremes of repression and explosion, you can slow down and feel your words.

Taste every phrase as it leaves your tongue. Imagine what you say as pebbles dropped into a still pool, and notice the ripples they create.

When you can respect your words as things that matter and have consequence, you will find those around you giving similar weight to what you say.

Odilon Redon, "Silence" (1911)