Play With Words

Play with words, folks.

Even if you and words don't get along. Dig them out of your head and put them on paper. Doesn't matter if you type them, or scribble them, or don't think they're good enough, or make enough sense, or are in the right order.

Record your memories. If that's the only thing you can do to play worth words, do it. It's a start. Maybe you want to do something more grand. That's always possible. But don't forget those stupid little moments, the sappy ones, the ones that maybe come up once in a while and you think about. If they keep coming back, they want a way out so others can experience them.

Tonight I'm getting a little weepy over a bit of pop-synth from the late 1980s, because a student wrote about how the song made her reconsider the rocky relationship she was building with her parents.  Her dad introduced the song to her, and for a long time she considered it to be one worthy of listening to with a plate of pancakes to catch the syrup with.

But then she got to thinking about it. Listened to it. And reconsidered her approach to her parents, and the lessons these silly, stupid people were trying to teach her.

One of the comments I made on her paper is long the lines of "I wonder why we're so slow to express gratitude?" and the thought came to me immediately: "Hey, dummy. When was the last time you expressed gratitude toward someone else?"

I dunno. I guess a long time. I'd better fix that.

As it says in Doctrine and Covenants 109:

"And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom, seek learning even by study and also by faith;

"Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God."

Add to the "best books" "The Living Years," by Mike and the Mechanics. Because a student did, I now will too.