I have written about the relationship between stories and seeing already this year. This piece feels like the third in a series I didn’t know I was writing. The next layer is the way that words give shape to our (respective) worlds.

We are stumbling around on a spinning planet. (My newly minted first-grade son reminded me last week). Most of the time, I pretend I know what I am doing even though I feel like most of it is an improvisational act. Some of the people I love most have confided in me that it feels that way for them too. I am grateful that I am not alone in this.

We sit at the kitchen table, or around a fire, or on the beach and we talk about the world as we see it. And I am delighted to discover that the world does not look exactly the same to all of us. We notice different things, wear different lenses, hear differently, focus in on different parts of the same reality. When we talk about the world as we see it, the different perspectives allow me to have a wider vision. Occasionally, I leave a conversation and realize that the words have changed my world.

It was breakfast time on about the fourth day of school (but my spirit was sure it was the 42nd of September) when my daughter said her cereal tasted bad and she would not eat it. I picked up the bowl to smell it and sure enough the milk was bad. I got another bowl, pouring from the new milk, while I found my keys and brushed hair. 

“Eat this. It is new. The first one was expired.” 

A few minutes later, I sat to eat my eggs, when my youngest exclaimed, “Are you sure you should eat that, Mom? I thought you said it was egg-spired!” I don’t think I will ever think about expiration dates again without smiling about eggs and the joy of six-year-olds hearing words and making sense of the world. His words just turned spoiled milk into something beautiful forever.

Several days later, I was sitting on my couch with a friend and we were talking about a conversation we had had a few weeks previous. She had commented that something was terrible. I listened as she told me about it and then, without thinking, I asked, “Is it helpful to think about it as hard, rather than terrible?” I hadn’t really remembered saying this and when I heard it repeated back to me, I was worried that I had been terribly insensitive and apologized. 

And then my friend told me not to apologize, that the conversation had been a gift. And more than that, that this is a thing I do. Reshape the world with words. Articulate something in a way that changes the arc of the story. And that the words have changed her world.

 I was talking with my mom about the hard things people have to do in life and how often people with good intentions comment about people’s strength. It seems to me that people facing serious or chronic illness, walking through traumas, parenting children with significant challenges (or any number of other things) are not any stronger than anyone else. They — or we — have simply arrived at a mountain that must be climbed. It has helped me to say over and over again that the only way out is through, and to acknowledge that the one-moment-at-a-time-uncertainty-and-survival-of-the-worst-thing is the hardest part.

One of my favourite prayers is, “Give me eyes to see.” I think I am coming to a deeper understanding of why. The words I use to describe a thing become my reality. By sharing words, we give voice to the different ways that we can describe, understand and appreciate a world that is so much bigger than our perception of it. And when the words change, my sight shifts and I see things differently, with more depth and nuance. 

May it ever be so.