For years, I have had a thick infatuation with the word prose.

Often if I was making a choice at a bookstore, if there was any mention by a critic as to the prose of that particular novel, I was sold. In the same way that I am drawn to anything that symbolically uses the image of a tree, this was my signal, my special code to know that something could likely take me somewhere and inspire the expansion and growth for which I was searching.

My relationship with words started when I was very young. I grew up in places that were very isolated, both physically and in other ways as well.

Words and I were an item. We were often together at sunset, and again during sunrise.

I fell in love with their essence, their ability to soul-speak and their power to make one feel, heal as well as to steal—as in take away or cut down, like a sword. Words are also like passion, in that they have the ability to ignite and illuminate, but also to burn to the ground.

We can love a word in and of itself, for its vibration, for all that one specific word represents and triggers within us. A word is a vessel, which carries in it endless potential for both beauty and pain, and everything else in between.

Like any love affair, the perfect prose, that specific sequence of words that speaks directly to you, can act as the perfect balance of both entrapment and escape.

When we delve into the result of our words in sequence, as in the perfectly resonating prose, we begin to see the same effect that music can have when we play one note after another—a sentence, a paragraph, sometimes only an utterance as a fine, original work of artistic beauty.

Just as we can receive from words, we can also give.

We can use our words to emit certain Truths to others that they may have forgotten. We remind each other so that we remember, and we can also remember our potential to use the power in our words to remind.

If you and your relationship with this type of expressions are stuck in a rut, consider first developing an awareness around the words that you use in all of your relationships, including your relationship with yourself and even casual exchanges throughout your day and on social media.

We can ask ourselves if the words that we take in are nourishing to us or if they are something different? Are the words that we put out into the world that which heals or steals? Is what we are saying truly an improvement on saying nothing at all?

If you are like me, and struggle with commitment to other things in your life, consider softly whispering “I do” to a lifelong love affair with words and the potential beauty and truth that our co-creating can bring to our collective state.

It is my honest hope that our love with words will have played such a strong, harmonious chord so that some lingering effects will remain—that we will continue to speak, and that our voices will have evolved to resonate within all of those we leave behind.

Author: Katie Vessel

Editor: Emily Bartran

Photo: Mary West/Flickr