The overnight arrival of snow still fills us with childlike wonder. Suddenly the familiar world outside the window is unfamiliar, transformed by a covering of white.
I love the way snow changes the quality of daylight, particularly when the sun shines after snowfall. The reflection of white light changes the way you see the world. See things differently was a phrase used when I worked on the Old Vic brand some time ago. It’s a common enough phrase we all urge on ourselves and our clients, but we don’t always take it seriously enough.
Snow makes it clear that you can see things differently – in a literal way. I travelled up to Edinburgh and back last week through the frozen landscape of Britain. In the daylight it was beautiful, but it also made me look and think differently.
Seeing the train tracks running straight and black through the whiteness into the distance – this inevitably for me connects to vivid images stored in my memory of things I’ve never actually seen, except in photos and films. I see benign images of trains puffing through Russian steppes or Rocky Mountains, or more chilling images of journeys to Eastern European concentration camps. Snow and ice seem to connect us, perhaps more powerfully than other types of weather, to that part of our brain where memory and imagination meet.
All that, though, is simply about seeing the familiar in an unfamiliar way. When the snows clear, the path to your front door looks much the same as before. When the snow drops from the tree branches, the tree is the same tree, and those cat footprints you see now in the snow are soon returned to a memory in the earth.
Think now of what’s around you and most familiar to you. Think particularly of your business writing. Think of those words you see and hear most often, the words that are the constant objects in your verbal landscape. You know which ones they are, and they’ll be slightly different for each of you. It might be ‘marketing’ or ‘communication’ or ‘efficiency’ or strategy’ or even ‘storytelling’.
Is familiarity breeding contempt? Why? These are words with meaning. But is this meaning strong enough for you, are you seeing them in a light that’s like daylight in fresh snow? Try again. See things differently.
Thanks for that, John. What an an inspiring note to start the year on. I decided to try applying this to the business writing word that I’ve been feeling slightly contemptuous towards today: ‘invoices’. Oh well, I’ll keep trying…
The words I’d like to offer for the freshly fallen snow treatment are ‘messaging’ and ‘narrative’
Enjoyed reading your blog as an interlude to reading the world news.
Here’s my very short collection of words from this morning’s press that compare European and Australian weather conditions.
‘Big freeze tightens grip on Europe’ – gripping, cancelled, unleashed, impassable, blanketed and bracing.
‘Victoria bakes above 40 degrees’ – endured, dehydration, catastrophic, extreme, soaring and withstand.
Seeing life differently!
Yes, from my rooftop balcony last evening I watched the intense heat extract water in blankets of blue grey. Sheets of haze heading upwards from the expanse of the Bay. Overhead forming clouds .