Say

When was the last time your mouth followed your heart? Where there were no filters on your tongue and no Darwin’s natural selection at work with your words…

Isn’t this what makes  children so fabulous? The ability to speak their mind without giving two hoots about what they are actually speaking? I am not saying to be careless and drop inappropriate comments at the drop of that hat – simply let your heart have its way instead of the muddling brain editing what you are looking to express.

There have been so many moments filed away in my brain that if I open them, I invariably wish that I had spoken instead of choosing to remain silent. And what I noticed was that I was also repressing the GOOD things and not just the snide & sarcastic remarks (absolutely well-deserved though). I was doing it by keeping quiet, maintaining a neutral face and reigning in the urge to give those impulsive hugs!

I have little experienced in theater and mime was my absolute favourite – the scope of storytelling through expressions is tremendous and most enjoyable. Every day we used to exercise our faces and the control our features into putting together the emotion we want to showcase – happiness, greed, anger, fear, greed, insanity, love – you name it, we did it. I learnt the true power of our faces and the depth of feelings it can project.

It came out insanely well during out post-graduation when our communications professor made us all recite this very stupid passage in a serious dramatic mode …. In front of a video camera!!! So that we could look at our recordings and study our verbal and non-verbal patterns. The output was hilarious with people trying to keep a straight face while narrating. It resulted in this video by this creative guy, who put together the bloopers and shy smiles and bursts of laughter uncontrolled during this exercise to Say by John Mayer – And the line “Say what you need to say” kind of ended up as our motto.

A motto that I wish I could go back to or at least, work towards! And let go instead of holding back on that compliment or that apology or simply a thank you. Expressing involves more than one person which is beautiful!

Linda’s prompt at Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “Press.” Find a word that starts with press-, ends with -press, or use “press” as a word all by itself and responsible for filling me with the touching memories of university! 🙂