You’ve heard it all before

and that’s necessary

(may newsletter)

We often need to hear things more than once before their meaning can take hold or properly land within us.

We often need to hear things more than once before their meaning can take hold or properly land in us somewhere.

Thoughts, words and ideas are just like actions, movements and practical skills, we need to practice them before they embed. After a while thanks to neuroplasticity, new pathways and thought patterns start to take shape. What’s more, when we learn something new and practice it again and again, the new knowledge begins to take over from the old knowledge. Our new patterns replace our hold patterns and this is just a true for the way we think, as it is for the way we move.

Lately, as I express an idea or thought out loud or written down, the words that thread together feel especially meaningful and truthful. They haven’t just come out of my mouth, they’ve originated from somewhere deeper, as though they are part of something else, something that is also a part of me (not all the time obviously, I also very much like to indulge in nonsense and the occasional small talk!) I can have a similar kind of experience with the words of others, either written or spoken. These expressions are not novel, yet they can often feel revelatory, as if I am hearing them for the very first time and a lightbulb turns on inside my head. There is something so profound about the moment when something you seem to have always known finally reveals itself, when you are able to listen in a way that you simply could not have done before the very moment that it happens in.

They haven’t just come out of my mouth, they’ve originated from somewhere deeper, as though they are part of something else, something that is also a part of me

You’ve probably heard that one before, right? So does that make it more or less worthy? How do we retain the nuance? Have you experienced moments where your words feel aligned with something bigger than you?

The tricky thing is knowing how to spot the difference between meaningless repetition or cliches (especially with pop words like well-being, community, organic, diversity…) and the words of a deeply aligned truth. Particularly when you may have heard that supposed truth hundreds of times already.

Perhaps time is the magic ingredient, perhaps our scepticism and critical analysis are all necessary stepping stones to discovering and rediscovering the truth at just the right moment, again and again.

But there is a moment, isn’t there? when the words stop being merely something that you think or hear, and become something that you feel, that touches you, that maybe even changes you. In my experience, this is the same for those repeated movement patterns and our embodied experiences.

In those moments I feel as though a trust is built, some kind of support system that offers a sense of belonging or of getting closer to understanding. Of course, that sense of trust fades in and out, and sometimes it still desserts me completely, but you know (because you’ve probably heard it somewhere before, or maybe you’ve even felt it yourself...) we don’t learn in straight lines, and anyway it’s the journey, not the destination that’s important…