It’s A Lot To Ask

Are you willing to commit to read 1,000,000 words over the next 12 months? It is a lot to ask. Isn’t it? We all lead such busy lives. We don’t have time for such a commitment.

How about reading 15 minutes per day? Does this sound more manageable? Would you commit to that if you knew it would improve your day, your income, your life in general?

Finding time to read in a digital age has become a challenge for most of us. Images are easily digested on our smartphones. Text messages and twitters transmit thoughts faster, briefer. They are concise.

Somewhere though we must learn the words we use to express our thoughts. Words are picked up by happenstance or popular usage. But it’s a different thing if you want to have command over the expression of your thoughts. We think many things but words have specific meanings. What we say may not encompass all that we are thinking.

Words are risky too. Words cannot be taken back once spoken. What we say is cast in stone. Understood or misunderstood.

There was a song I learned as a kid. The chorus intrigued me in that it consists of only five words used a total of sixteen times. Its message was this: ’Beautiful words, wonderful words of life.’ The lyrics in addition to the chorus create a picture of the importance of words and the significance of the picture that the words create. Words are beautiful when they create life.

Expanding our word vocabulary to better express our thoughts is probably a good idea. Sometimes our thoughts are not well put together and they paint a corrupted picture of our life and our life experience.

Thoughts and words are a living expression of our lives. So new vocabulary influences and changes our thoughts and therefore our lives.

Christians Pastors often used the following words before delivering a spoken message. ’Let the words of my mouth AND the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God.’ This might be a great thing for all of us to say before we open our mouths to speak with anyone. Is what I am about to say something that I could and would say to God if I was speaking to Him face to face?

It also reminds us that the ‘meditation of our hearts’ reflect the life we lead. The contradiction between spoken word and practice speaks a thousand times louder than the actual words themselves.

Expanding our vocabulary helps us better understand how we are living.

They say that reading fifteen minutes per day is the equivalent of reading one million words per year. So why can we say ‘no’ to one and ‘maybe’ or ‘yes’ to the other? The ‘yes’ only comes when we are convinced that reading will make our lives better.

I cannot answer whether that is true for you. But I can say that if you listen well to your words you will discover the need and the desire and the hunger to read more to build a better vocabulary.

As my childhood song says;

Sing them over again to me, wonderful words of life.
Let me more of their beauty see, wonderful words of life.
Words of life and beauty, teach me faith and duty.
Beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life.
Beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life.

Nothing beats beautiful words. Beautiful words of life.