This past week as I was making a delivery for work, I was listening to Eric Church’s song, “Kill a Word.” In it he brings up a number of individual words, primarily those with negative connotations, and discusses his desire to destroy them.
In the first verse he mentions: never, goodbye, regret, fear, lonely, and hate.
In the second: brokenness, heartbreak, upset, disgrace, and over.
And in the third: temptation, evil, wicked, vice, vile, and hostile.
As I listened to this song, I thought about all the times I’d let words like these control me. They’ve controlled my thoughts, my actions, and my choices; at times it felt as if they all but suffocated me.
Single words can be powerful, often far more than we realize. In my last post, I mentioned me and my mom’s tradition of focusing on a single word for an entire year. In 2016, my word was”give”, this year, it is “patience.” And similar to those mentioned by Eric Church, I have no doubts that other words will try and take over. Words like doubt, greed, fear, and failure. They’re all going to be sitting there on the sidelines, offering a hand when things get hard.
I’ve seen myself fall victim before. I’ve seen “achievement” swerve towards “disappointment” and land in “heartbreak.” For along with every positive word we can focus on, there will always be a countering negative.
In the chorus of the song, Eric Church sings, “if it were up to me to change, I’d turn lies and hate to love and truth. If I could only kill a word.”
Yes, if only.
Because no, we can’t kill words. But we can kill their power over us. We can’t prevent finding them, but we can navigate around them.
So this year, whether you set an intention to focus on one word, or find a number of words to focus on along the way, know that you can hold on to them. And just as there is always a negative to counter a positive, there are bigger and better positives to combat that negative.
When I think about like that, I like to imagine we actually can kill words, not with our hands but with other words. Hello can kill goodbye. Time can heal brokenness. Hope can kill despair. Inspiration can kill disappointment. Love can kill hate.
Kimberlee K. 
The importance of words! I love this so much and never thought of it like this! This an amazing post and I can’t wait to read more from you. I would love if you’d check my blog out as well, thank you so much.
Thank you! And of course!
This is amazing! And me too can also practise this this year! Not really killing those words but not giving them power over me! I love this post very encouraging!
Thanks so much! Keep fighting the good fight! 🙂
❤
…always, positive vibes trump negative 🙂
xoxo
Very, very nice! 🙂
Thank you! 🙂
though….killings may not be appreciated…always…
❤❤
So true. Words have great power; sometimes not the most positive power for us. Well written post. Thank you.
Thanks so much!
Words. Words. I used to believe in words.
Sounded like a pro!
Words is a software that humans programmed inside humans. Thank god trees don’t speak orelse they could be worse than animals.Thank god animals don’t have intellectual power like us orelse they could be the enemies of our species or make us extinct.Thank god for the intellect to be able to use words.
Exactly, words are so important!
Reblogged this on Debatably Dateable.
Thanks so much!
Thank you for sharing! Words do hold great power when we let them. I like the positive spin 🙂 I will keep these thoughts with me this week along with being thankful. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Aww thanks so much! Happy Thanksgiving to you too!
This is so beautiful and incredibly inspirational, thank you for sharing!!
Thank you so much! ❤