I’ve been troubling over the word settle. The good, the bad and the ugly connotations. The original meaning, my meaning, and the complex tangle of the commonly understood and culturally contested idea of what it means to settle – in life, on land, for the sake of resolve or the intent to impose in attitude or physical presence.
Because words matter, and mine is a vocation that calls upon them.
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Their origin matters, being aware of the unspoken implications when we’re involved in an exchange matters. Many words, depending on how they are woven together and the intonation with which they are delivered, coupled with context, have the potential to harm as much as help, to confuse as much as clarify.
At the same time, to get hung up on the granularity can be stifling, can hold us back, can cause us to stumble in a way that can block or betray our efforts to understand and be understood. Getting stuck on meaning without questioning what’s really true beyond what we think we know can dis-empower us from using language in a way that serves.
In the case of settle, I felt momentarily elated when my mind sputtered it out as one of my three intentional words for 2023, swiftly followed by deflation on remembering its poisoned association with colonialism.
Words are imperfect but they are what we have
Looking back to the early 15th century, to settle denotes the suspension of particles in a liquid. From 1550s Middle England, it refers to the taking of a seat. In other words, it’s a lowering down, a dissipation, a distillation, a de-escalation, a state of easing in and resting.
While it is also associated with the innocuous process of taking up residence, of settling down, of establishing community, the colonial obsession with conquest – of settling on (i.e. stealing and taking over) land has brutalised the word, tainting it through association with violence. In this sense, the latter meaning is antithetical to the original, replacing gentleness with force.
I’m choosing to reclaim and remember its original sense, which is how I feel and intend to live by it – as an indication to slow down, to allow the dust to settle, as a resistance to and a rebellion against the inner and outer impulse for haste and excess.
TRUST that things will SETTLE and life will FLOW
These are my three words as they formed in the ether into a sentence, after love, rest and freedom were linguistically cast out of the equation, because they are contained with the essence of what I settled upon.
To settle isn’t an ending; it’s a pause, from which something inevitably emerges, from a state of quietly confident composure. It feels fitting for the current season of Winter, and for the imminent journey to a settle into a new home in the country where I’m realising a long-held dream to find physical and mental space, away from the maddening crowds of the city.
Flow suggests the movement that follows from the pause, whereby whatever follows in the right time will be conscious and creative rather than hurried or hasty (two habits I’m intent on dissolving). To embody this requires an element of trust in oneself, in myself, in the wisdom of my 45 years of experience, an age at which there is a physiological and emotional shift that 21st century Western culture has had me resisting. That resistance has kicked up all kinds of murk which is an obstacle to flow, to freedom, to love.
Trust is an active choice to rebel, to pivot, to choose differently, to tap into one’s own wisdom and understanding, rather than the constant reaching outwards in the culturally endorsed belief that we need more – knowledge, possessions, wealth, etc – in order for our existence to matter.
Trust is also an actively soothing and empowered perceptual shift away from the inculcated attitude of woe and despair at the inevitable process of change and impermanence (as felt in ageing and other states of motion). This process can be freeing instead of depressing if we, if I, let it; if I trust and let life flow rather than do the futile and stagnating thing and resist.
To trust and to settle is therefore the antidote to doubt and restlessness, and the precursor to finding the flow state. If we give things time and trust that we know, we are, we have enough and so let ourselves and life be, the low level of anxiety that rumbles in our hearts, minds and bodies will eventually subside – and who doesn’t want that? I certainly do. Whereas if we fill our minds and our lives to the point of spilling over, we will always be caught in a frenzied state of trying to contain and recover from the excess input or output of energy.
Flow then comes from a loosening up, not a rigid fixation (again, words and meaning making is fluid) on perfection, accomplishments or any other metaphorical poison that relates to the things we crave or reject.
It’s an emboldening step to inquire into and reclaim the power and potential of words, to loosen their binding to parts of history that muddied the waters, to free them from associations that needlessly limit my process and practice of using words to and expression to get out of my head and out of my way.