How do you want to use your words?

How goes it?

Right now my favourite Friday night activity is watching Ted Lasso (on Apple TV). It is SO GOOD.

In the episode I’ve just watched there was a super touching funeral scene, complete with eulogy. It made me also think back to the ‘Stop all the clocks’ eulogy in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

While I cried at both, I also love that as humans we get to speak (or sing) in a way that connects so powerfully to others. Whether it evokes tears or laughter…or both!

I’ve never ‘given a eulogy’ in the sense of standing up and speaking it. But I did write one. For my Dad. He didn’t want a funeral, but did know that he was dying (of cancer). So I wrote one for him, in a eulogy style, but in present tense. And I got to send it to him so he could read it while still alive. I got to celebrate his awesomeness, and thank him, and try to make him laugh too.

I never get tired of the fact that we humans get to use our words in such varied and special ways, to connect.

So this month is a prompt to use your words, in the ways that you want to. What a true privilege and delight.

There are also often less rules for how we do this than we might think.

This picture is from another occasion, where my friends prompted me to give a speech. It was to mark sending this Wishboat off on its way. (A handmade boat with little scrolls inside – wishes for all the people that I loved.) I remember my speech being being short, and both serious and ridiculous. I remember my friends cheering and clapping. Us humans can be great like that!

And do you know what….Although it was not a wish that I could have even imagined at the time…I ended up swapping wedding vows with the dude in the picture below who helped my build and launch the boat.