Class! A new term.

I nearly didn't post the blog of a couple of days ago.

I looked at it and thought – there I go again. Change blah, change blah. Change this, change that, blah blah blah. I was slightly aware of disappearing up my own behind in a mist of rhetoric.

Some thoughts are not revolutionary – most in fact. They are incrementally grafted onto the shoulders of giants.

I forgave myself when I remembered that I had read recently that rhetoric was one of the staple teachings of Greek education. Along with grammar and logic, it was one of the three ancient arts of discourse.

And defined?... "to improve the capability of writers or speakers to inform, persuade or motivate particular audiences in specific situations". Put like that it's a pretty powerful concept, yet one treated so dismissively when spotted and tagged by news interviewers, for example. 

But great orators were built on this. Cicero. Churchill. Blair. 

An accusation of rhetoric is often prefixed by the word "just" implying it is a cheap trick.
But I like cheap tricks. So much so that I think we should use one by giving it a French twist and renaming it rhétorique. It seems to lend a certain credibility (or credibilité). It worked for liberté and égalité, and if it gives the sweaty French a bit of style then it can't be a bad idea.

A change of thoughts is a wise precursor to a change in action. 

Call it talking to yourself, an internal voice, the angel/devil on your shoulder, it's all the same thing. A confrontational dialogue arguing the pros and cons, with you playing both parts. Using your experiences, ethics and moral code to make a decision, hopefully the right one. Generate options - Cull - Select.

Every decision changes you. 

You embark on it as you, but you are delivered through it to become someone else.

It may take 120 days to replace every red blood cell in your body, but when it comes to change of thoughts and actions it may take but a moment.

Allow yourself to be a bit suggestible - life is improv. Say you face a decision with six options. (Let's keep it simple and assume you're having pudding).

Imagine yourself surrounded by 6 shadows of yourself. Like you, but faint and embossed (well you may have sunk a bottle of vino by pudding).

When you have made your decision you will become one of those shadows. It will take form. It will now be you. The other shadows will fade and disintegrate.

I accept that choosing between lemon meringue and tiramisu may not require all your skills of rhétorique, (you're warming to it, aren't you? Admit it!) but you get the point, I trust. 

If you're going to live in somebody's shadow, it might as well be your own.