~ Rudyard Kipling
By Pat Remick
Last weekend I joined six other women in an interesting activity designed to rid ourselves of negatives from 2010 and replace them with our wishes and hopes for 2011.
Not only was this a delightful new perspective on New Year's resolutions for me -- and also timely given Gina's thought-provoking blog entry yesterday -- it was another reminder of the power we give to words.
Energized by good food and wine, we each wrote our negatives from 2010 onto small pieces of colorful paper and individually them into a roaring fire. By writing down these feelings, incidents or names of people --- and then destroying them -- we were able to use words to symbolically bring closure to the past year so we could move freely into the new one. As writers, we revere words -- and what we can make them convey, how they are able to inspire us, and the stories they can tell. But I had never considered that burning them might be an act of hope.
Next, we listed our wishes and desires for 2011 on lovely notepaper to be carried in "pretty little purses" throughout the year. My colorful Chinese brocade bag now holds 17 wishes for 2011 and yes, "finish my book" is one of them.
But I also wrote "live with joy," "imagine the possibilities," and "count my blessings." And I am hopeful that this act of cherishing my 2011 wishes and desires by recording them (and carrying them in a "pretty little purse") will help them come true.
I did some "Google" searching so I could share a few pithy quotes that were more literary than I am capable of producing about the importance of words in our lives. I liked this one by Charles Capps (as well as the Kipling one at the top of this blog entry):
"Words are the most powerful thing in the universe... Words are containers. They contain faith, or fear, and they produce after their kind."Do you believe in the power of words? Which ones would be on your list of wishes for 2011? Do you believe that writing them down can help them become reality?
