Words I Keep Coming Back To
by Agnieszka Wolsoncroft
There are words that inform us, and words that carry us. The words we find in textbooks and reports and instructions tell us things we need to know. But the words we keep coming back to — the ones that stay long after the book is closed, the ones we copy into journals and whisper to ourselves in quiet moments — those words do something different. They hold us. They reframe the thing we're standing in. They make the unbearable a little more bearable, and the beautiful a little more visible.
I have collected a few of them over the years. I want to share them with you today.
I'll start at the end, actually — with the words I found last, and understood first.
I was living in Ealing, London, when I came across a small card. It had a title — Just for Today — and it began with a single sentence:
"Just for today I will try to live through this day only, and not tackle my whole life problem at once."
I remember reading it and feeling something open. It was one of those AHA moments — the kind that don't announce themselves with fanfare, but quietly rearrange something inside you, and you are wider than you were a moment before. Eyes open, in a way they hadn't been quite so fully before.
Just today. Not the whole mountain. Not the whole year. Not the whole life. Just this day.
I have read that sentence hundreds of times since. In hotel rooms and at kitchen tables and on aeroplanes and in the middle of the night when sleep wouldn't come. Every time, it does the same thing: it brings me back to the size of one day. And one day, most of us can manage.
*
Those who know me even a little know that I have read Anne of Green Gables — and that I fell in love with it the way you can only fall in love with a book when you are young enough to be entirely defenceless against it.
I was a girl in Poland when I met Anne Shirley — red-haired, too much, full of words and feelings and a fierce imagination she refused to apologise for. An orphan who became a daughter. I made a promise to myself, quietly and completely, that one day I would do the same.
That promise kept. Many years, many countries, many versions of me later — when Anya came home, her Polish nickname was already Anya. The same name, the same sound, the three letters I had been carrying since childhood. A coincidence feels too small. A promise feels closer.
But what Anne gave me — beyond the dream of adoption — was something I only understood properly later. She switched something on in me. Her imagination was so alive, so unapologetic, so gloriously her own, that reading her I felt my own imagination wake up and stretch and decide it was allowed to take up space. Anne of Green Gables was the ignition.
And then, years later, I found the confirmation.
*
Albert Einstein — a man who had, you might say, a reasonably scientific sort of mind — wrote:
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
I read that as a teenager writing nostalgic poetry and feeling entirely too much about everything, and something in me said: yes, exactly, I knew it.
He also said that if you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales — and if you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales. The man who unlocked the universe was telling us that imagination was not a charming distraction from serious thinking. It was the engine of it.
I understood him. I knew it was true in my own life. Anne had lit the fire; Einstein told me the fire was real.
I became a writer. And through my writing — through every story I have sat with, every character I have followed, every book I have worked on — I understand this more deeply each time: knowledge is the map. Imagination is the courage to believe the destination is real.
The third came from Maya Angelou, and I have leaned on it more times than I can count.
"When people show you who they are, believe them the first time."
It sounds simple. It is not simple at all. It asks something quite demanding of us — to see clearly, even when we would rather not. To accept what is being shown, rather than what we were hoping for.
I have spent years being surprised by people — by kindness I didn't expect, and by disappointments that, if I am honest, I had seen coming. Maya Angelou's words have been a kind of quiet compass. Not harsh. Not cynical. Just honest. People tell us who they are all the time, in small choices and patterns and the things they don't say as much as the things they do.
I've learned to listen. I've learned to believe the first chapter, not wait for a different ending. And somehow, the more I've been willing to see people clearly, the easier it's become to appreciate the ones who show me something worth trusting. Because that is also true — people show you their kindness, their generosity, their loyalty. Believe that too, the first time.
*
Which brings me back to the card on my desk. The one I found in Ealing, that opened my eyes wider than I thought possible.
The Just for Today card goes on beyond that first sentence. It says: Just for today I will be happy. Just for today I will adjust myself to what is. Just for today I will take care of my body. Just for today I will strengthen my mind. Just for today I will exercise my soul.
It is a complete philosophy in three words — and it works because it is small enough to hold. Don't think about the whole mountain. Don't worry about the whole year. Just this. Just today. What can I do today? What is enough for today?
There is a reason these words have stayed with me all this time. They make things possible that otherwise feel impossible. They reduce the mountain to a single step. And that, I have found, is often exactly what is needed.
*
I wonder what words have stayed with you.
I wonder which sentence, heard at exactly the right moment, changed something. Which book you found as a child that planted something you're still growing. Which quote you've underlined so many times the page is faded now.
The words we carry are not accidents. They found us, or we found them, at the moment we were ready for them. And they stay because they're true — true in a way that goes beyond their dictionary meanings, into something more personal, more lived-in, more ours.
Hold them carefully. They are doing something important.
A Moment of TAG
The TAG Method — Thanksgiving, Appreciation, Gratitude — is my way of moving through life with intention and warmth. Here is how the words we love connect to each of its three steps:
Thanksgiving — Take Action
Write down one sentence that has stayed with you. Just one. You don't have to explain it or justify it — just write it somewhere you'll see it. On a card, in a notebook, on a sticky note above the kettle. Giving a word or sentence a home is an act of thanksgiving — you are saying: this matters, and I want to keep it close.
Appreciation — Build Awareness
Notice, this week, the words that land differently. A line in a book, something a friend says, a song lyric you've heard a hundred times but suddenly hear. Appreciation is the act of paying attention — and we can practise it with language as much as with roses in a garden or light on water.
Gratitude — Feel It
Think of one person whose words have changed something in you. They may not know it. It might have been something small — a single sentence, years ago. Let yourself feel grateful for it. And if it feels right, tell them.
These are just three of the words and sentences I keep coming back to. There are others — and I have a feeling I will be sharing more of them with you in future posts. Some collections are too good to open only once.
With Love and gratitude,
Agnieszka
If you follow me on Substack — Hidden in Plain Sight — come and find me there next Sunday. The word in question will be Trust. I think it might be one of the most important ones we explore together this year.
In two weeks, come back and find me here again. I'll be writing about the gifts that sometimes come wrapped in the difficult seasons — the unexpected things that grow in hard soil. I think you'll recognise something of your own life in it.
To read more of my posts, go back to BLOG | Agnieszka W.
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