Let Your Thoughts and Words Create Your World
Words are powerful. They can create or they can destroy. So choose your words wisely -Unknown
The one who guards their mouth protects their life. The one who opens their lips invites their own ruin.
-Proverbs 13:3
As the mysteries and miseries of the year have progressed, I’ve often thought to myself, what can be done in MY life, to change the current experience I’m having in this world. I was witnessing how easy it was to get swallowed into the distractions of media, the repeated trauma of seeing race based injustices online and in my physical community, the uncertainty of where humanity is headed, the strain of choosing “sides'' that divide and deny us individuality and Self-truths. There was a period during the last 8 months where I found that many were losing hope, had already lost hope, or were on the brink of losing hope--like me. I saw hopelessness reflected in the words I read and heard: “we’re doomed,” “this is the end,” “there’s no point in anything now.” During that week/weak period, I found myself at the second closest I’ve come to drowning in the waves of the world’s problems that seem to constantly crash against me. The compassion, empathy, and humanity I feel for others always draws me to the shore, but I’ve now learned how to swim through these issues and teach others the same, and I hope to do so by writing this to you.
Thinking again: what can be done in MY life, to change the current experience I’m having in this world, I remembered a sermon I heard by my Pastor one Sunday morning in February (2020), where he talked about the power of our words and their effect on our lives. I knew that my Will to choose Faith and Joy wouldn’t allow me to be brought back to a hopeless mentality or life, but the fact that I was so close to jumping into hopeless thoughts and speech was unsettling. Something had to be done; Even with much of the world being stagnant and scared.
When I was thinking about the sermon, I meditated on the thought of using my words to create a life, because I believe all life comes from a spoken thought. I sat and thought, and I began to weep. I wept because I realized negative, positive, and neutral thoughts all have the power to come alive. Many tears fell about human hate towards other humans, about people I had never met, about the homeless, about wars and sex trafficking, about good and evil principalities. I wept because they each are a thought-seed, that had been grown and watered into the world. Racism, Hatred, Insecurity, Murder, Poverty, Misogny, Bodily Harm, Earth Harm, Structural Inequities--all of them and more, are thought seeds, grown and watered into the world. They start from one mind that creates a thought, that speaks itself in words or in physical actions and they become. Everything that has life has the potential to become. Especially our thoughts and words.
I caught myself thinking hopeless and internalized thoughts such as “the world hates us (Black People/Black Women),” and “why is my breath a nuisance to society.” Maybe you can relate to that. But would it make a difference to you to know those words were creating a world in my head that imposed itself into actual reality? I began to see all of the world as hating me, a Black Woman. I began to think “I am not meant to be here”--here being much further than just America. And maybe you can also relate to that. But those were lies--Lies based on negative feelings that I chose to allow to dictate my perception of the rest of the world, and that’s unfair--Both to me and to those who do see me and respect me as a being. If I wanted something to change, I had to start being selective of the thoughts I allowed to linger and I had to choose to speak and think in a positive, truthful way. I’m not suggesting to negate your own feelings, but rather focus on positive truths. Don't allow the negative thoughts to form a dark world in your mind and reality. When we take a thought-seed, and let it take root in our mind, it begins to take root in our lives.
When I felt my mind going dark I began speaking negatively on the matters that were happening and in turn that altered my reality. When I decided to change that and speak to the matters in a positive light, that also altered my reality. I would say “I hope to see change in this world” and I began to see it. I’d say “I know something good will come out of this” and I began to bear small wins that amassed huge positive changes in my life. I won’t say it was easy all the time, but I found that if we have the clarity and faith that good will always prevail, chaos begins to seem less like chaos and more like stepping stones to growth and goodness. I share this to tell you we have the power to speak the life we want, instead of adopting the one that is imposed on us by others and the occurrences in our world. I encourage you to use that exact power to begin to think and speak the very life you want. If you struggle to speak positively or think positively, especially during the trying times that are now, I want you to think of it like this:
Your mind is a garden and you are the gardener. In the garden of your mind, you don’t want bugs eating up your good fruits and weeds overtaking your flowers. The bugs and weeds will always exist, but we have the power and the tools to get rid of them to preserve our garden and watch it prosper. In the same way, problems and negative thoughts and speech will always exist, but we have the power to filter them out and to garner solutions to issues we may face in life to make room for good things.
So, master gardener, I challenge you to find peace amongst the chaos when looking at life. I challenge you to be selective of the thoughts and words that take root. I challenge you to start speaking the life you want. I challenge you to be the best gardener over your mind that you can be so you may create the world you want to see in reality. Your world begins with a thought, that is spoken in words or actions that become. Your world starts with you.
