One Word

One of the most personally enlightening chapters I have read in recent memory was Chapter Eleven in "The Call" by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.  This chapter describes the idea we are each here to live one word to the fullest of our being.  We are challenged to look deeper than such words as Love or Joy or Peace because we are all these words.  Oriah asks us to look deeper into ourselves, perhaps into places we would like forget, and identify the word we have to stay the most conscious about and pay the most attention to in order to fully live this word.

I purposefully set out to find "my" word by not thinking about it, to let it come to me at a time when I would be most accepting to hear and acknowledge it.  I heard "my" word later that evening as I was falling asleep.  Speak.  To speak the unspoken.  My whole body knew this was My Word.  The longing in my heart knew I finally heard My Word.  And more than a year my mind is coming to terms I can no longer deny My Word.

The time has come to let go the self promises I made throughout my life not to speak and remain invisible.  I remember as a young girl weaving through the legs of the neighbourhood ladies as they stood on our front lawn and belly laughed at something I had said to a neighbour (and still to this day swear what I said was right).  I vowed I would never speak again so I could never be laughed at again.  Or there was the time as a teenager I was told to be quiet by my mother while I excitedly relayed the interesting factoids I had just seen on my favourite TV science show.  And then in my first job I made the faux pas of airing the group's major gripe to the manager during a team building meeting.  The group bailed on me, denying their concerns, and left me standing alone to be the speaker of truth.  These are just a few instances among many.  How many times to I have to get hit on the head?  Clam up and stay invisible already!

But that is not who I am.  I cannot not speak.  I cannot stand by silently when I know what needs to be spoken.  Remaining quiet when there is something to be said is like trying to capture the wind in a box.  So that night when I rediscovered My Word is Speak, I finally had a tie that bound my life together and an explanation for why I kept breaking my self promise to be silent. 

"Remember, there is one word you are here to say with your whole being.

When it finds you, give your life to it.  Don't be tight-lipped and stingy"

from "The Call" by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Do you connect with this?  What wisdom do you want to add? What questions come to mind?  How do you see it differently?

Share your wisdom to the discussion on One Word.