The most destructive words…

I took a lot of criticism when my kids were growing up… I taught them there was no such thing as a “bad” word.  Often words are misused.

Take swear words for example…  if you use them as space fillers, it appears one does not know enough word to explain their thoughts or feelings.  I did allow my children to use curse words, but only if they used them appropriately.  If they slammed their finger in a door, yes… say “shit”.  These words are offensive to some, but if the intent is to offend, nothing beats a good curse word.

So, there are no “good” or “bad” words, just misused ones, to my way of thinking.  They are simply words to describe, to communicate, to evoke… and nothing more.  Use any word needed as long as it fits your thought or your intension.

I’ve tried to eliminate the concept of both “good” and “bad” from my list of labels.  Those labels tend to evoke either pressure or negativity as it relates to what ever I am describing.  When I eliminate the the labels, I simply have an experience.  Not a bad experience, but an experience that I perhaps learned from, that I gained something from, that I may or may not want to repeat.

I am trying the same concept with the word “should”.  That pressure inducing word that fills my “to-do” list with more items than can be completed in a 24 hours period.  ”Should” often leaves me feeling frustrated at best, incompetent at worst.  ”Should” very quickly becomes “have to”.  By the same token is its cousin, “shouldn’t”, which leads directly to “can’t” can also take a back seat to perhaps words that better fit what I am doing or how I am feeling.  I’ve realized that we place a lot of rules on ourselves with the words we use, a lot of pressure… and then we quantify that experience by using the labels “good” and “bad” on top of that.

I should breathe… and that’s about it.  Anything more than that is simply a choice, an experience… a flavor of life.