Every day, we attempt an action that is both utterly commonplace – and technically, ostensibly impossible.

We endeavor to move thought from our minds into a space where someone else can hear – and hopefully participate in it.

We set out to move the ideas “in here” … “out there.”

TODAY, like all the days before, we will attempt to communicate.

We will try a conversation. With a friend, with a child, a client, a partner.
We will write a blog post, a social media post, a newsletter, a text.
We will labor over a sales page, a bio, an about page.
We will plan before hitting “Go Live” on the video.
We will rehearse asking for what we need.

We will open our mouths to speak – or put fingers to a keyboard – in an attempt to answer the call to “put ourselves out there.”

But the cursor blinks. The tongue stalls. The heart SINKS.

Will I say it right? Will they get what I mean? Will they understand?

Communicating is H A R D.

It’s not you. It’s the words.

Before us lies the ACHING space between what we want to say and what we will say. The awe-ful gap between what we mean and what is heard.

So we reach for the deeply-flawed-most-powerful-and-only tool at our disposal. The institution in which we have practiced and trained since birth.
The lumbering, speeding train onto which we are born.

Words both inherited and acquired.
Language familiar and still strange.
At once beautiful and terrible.
Infinite and yet always inadequate.

At the heart of One Word – this effort you and I are taking to re-examine the words we use – is this question:

Can we trust these words?

IS this navigating the aching gap?
ARE we communicating?

That’s the word, nerd.