Monday, November 12, 2007

Our words have power

I spent the day being very aware of the words that were coming out of my mouth, and what words were coming out of the mouth's of others. At the beginning of the day my goal was only to avoid the pointless conversation outlined in my previous post. I slipped up a few times today, either catching myself in the act of saying "Fine" to the response of "How are you?", or realizing that I had right afterwards.

But, along with trying to say something other than "Nothing much" when somebody asked "What's up", I also tried to ask interesting questions. It started off in History class this morning. I stole the idea from my Brother's blog and started asking some of my close friends to say something inspirational. And before I new it, all of my friends were in on it. Some of them were listing off favourite quotes that they loved, and some of them were saying something completely ridiculous, but hilarious all the same. We had a good laugh, and it made people think. There was only one person in the group who did not come up with a substantial answer.

I asked a few more of my friends the same question at lunch time, and one person in particular told me to give them a minute to think about it, and sure enough came back with something quite profound and worth while. This friend isn't someone I generally have lengthy conversations with, but once I had invested some time into asking them a question, they all of the sudden started telling me this funny story about something that had happened on the weekend, and I was drawn into a new conversation.

After everybody had said their words of inspiration I asked another question: "What is the one of the most exciting things you've ever done?" We went around the circle and all of my friends shared something about a vacation they had, or some other experience they had enjoyed. A few people said they had not had something exciting happen to them, or that they didn't know, but sure enough when they saw everybody sharing and joining in on the conversation, they did as well; adding their two cents worth of exciting events. This may not seem like an amazing thing to you as you read this, but the intelligence, and thought put into the conversation today was on a completely different level than it usually is. A higher lever. The usual meaningless banter at my school lunch table was not present today. Instead I learned something new about the people I spend so much of my time with. It's a shame we don't actually know eachother.

I plan on keeping this up. Everyday a new question.
Let's be aware of what were saying.
Let's be intelligent with our words.
Our words have power.

Until later,

Kirstyn

2 comments:

Madeleine said...

hmm
i definitely posted something a couple days ago, but i guess i didn't press post or something.
i think you are doing a great thing that should be done more by everyone!
i might just borrow your idea. hehehe
keep it up!

Madeleine said...

oooh hahahaha
i just read that you have to approve these posts.
thats probably why the last post didnt post!
man i am so silly
well have a great day, when you read this, and decide whether to post it or not.
:)