Sloganators

Posted on April 8, 2005 in Originality & Creativity Responsibility

It’s not a sign of stability to build your life on slogans. I’ve seen others do this many times in workshops and support groups. When the pressure comes on, they collapse or draw into themselves. I believe this happens because they’ve never examined themselves, never known this truth: that life is not mechanical or forced, but discovered and released.

Italo Calvino remembered that for every cliche there was a time when it was new, when it expressed the inexpressible. So, too, it was for the person who coined many of the slogans that you use. But I have observed this: those who recite the slogans and conceal the workings of their own heart are those who will be the first to fall.

In all things, we must be the woman or the man we are, to speak our minds respectfully, to reveal our vulnerability and our strength to the world.

---

One subtle form of sloganeering is to kvetch about how others ruin our lives. Country music, for example, is full of heartbreak and the chords remain the same. Likewise poetry is afflicted by the eyes of the woman who leaves us over lattes or the butterflies in the garden.

To surrender to a cliche is to abandon who we are.