The Power of Words

NOTE:  Sorry this one is late!  I was out of town for a family reunion and realized too late that I hadn't scheduled my Thursday blog

.  Instead, you get it on Sunday! I hope everyone had a wonderful week!

Every night I climb onto my treadmill and go for a walk. Rain or shine, winter or summer, it doesn't matter. I go for a walk. My treadmill isn't situated in front of the window where I can watch the comings and goings around me. It isn't in front of the television, and I get motion sickness if I read a book or magazine. It's facing a wall. And before that, half of the treadmill was underneath the stairs, with just a single barren light bulb to illuminate the dingy space as I walked.

How then, did I find the motivation to get on that mechanical hamster wheel night after night, month after month for up to an hour at a time? Words. All around me are thousands of motivational quotes from a vast array of individuals. You'll find Socrates, Thomas S. Monson, Rocky Balboa, James Bischoff, Jillian Michaels, Confucious, Dahli Llama, Mahamed Ali, Will Smith, Michael Jordan, and just about everything in between.

The other day, as drip was dripping down my face, and I was reading one of my favorite quotes, I considered the power of the written word and how it affects nearly every individual in the world. Words can uplift, or annihilate one's spirit. They can motivate or depress; They can bring a person to action, or cause a person to shrink in fear. Words are eternal.

We find them in scrolls, etched into caves, written in hundreds or thousands of different languages and dialects. Words enable us to express the deepest desires of our hearts and our brains.

Oh what power we as writers have by choosing to use words as our means of communication. What potential we have to affect those who choose to read our words. You and I, each of us writers, have the power to change the life of one person, or millions by the words that we write.

We have the power to change another's mindset, to entertain, to enlighten, or to help others escape this reality into another, carefully crafted reality filled with characters and worlds that we have created.

We have the potential to be the next Shakespeare – offering up words that will live long after we have returned to our maker.

Oh, the power of words. Oh what power you, as a writer, have. What will you do with that power – the talent that your Father in Heaven has entrusted to you?