Words (in general)

When was the last time you used a word? I’m going to make a (hopefully) educated guess that it was within the last ten seconds. It might have been a verbal word, shouting to someone outside the room where your computer is. It was likely a typed word in a search engine or a URL bar. You use words all the time. Unless you have taken a vow of verbal, digital, and written silence (which I doubt you have done, since you are reading this now and must have typed something to get to this point) you use words often and extensively.

Dear Readers,

This is a blog dedicated to words. There shall be stories about words, poems about words, mindless rants about words (though I shall try to keep the rants short), information about words, and you may be assured that each and every post will make extensive use of words.

My humble goal is to post each week (on the weekend). Each weekly post will have a topic word (or maybe multiple words) that I will rant about (briefly), research (a bit), and do some creative piece on (anything from a limerick to a story). I am always open to word suggestions. This first post however, is about words in general.

Let me jump right in.

Words are very important.

Go back. Read that last line again. Believe it.

“What makes words so important?” you might ask? Well I will tell you.

I don’t know.

It’s true. I have reasons why I think they are important and believe with all my soul that they are. But I don’t know. Words in many ways are a mystery. We make sounds with our vocal chords or make scratches with a pencil or pen and somehow meaning, thoughts, and truth are communicated. We use words to sway others to our way of thinking, to anger them, calm them, and push them towards sorrow or joy. Words allow us to know what has happened in the past and to lay down plans for the future.

How do you use your words? Think about it…

If you want to put it simply: Words are magic. We speak and there is an effect. Sometimes this effect is in our own minds alone and sometimes in the minds of our listeners. They might cause an army to rise and a nation to go to war, or they might assuage the sorrows of a grieving friend. Psychology tries to explain this (I shall be doing a good deal of research into this at some later point). However, there is no real explanation for what words do and there is little limit to what words can accomplish.

“I love you.” These three words have led to most of the happiness and unhappiness in the world.

“Kill them,” and the various forms of this death sentence have snuffed out countless lives.

“Today the German people has been beaten by a quite other world, while in its domestic life it has lost all spirit; no longer has it any faith. But how will you give this people once more firm ground beneath its feet save by the passionate insistence on one definite, great, clear goal?” This is a collection of words spoken by one Adolf Hitler in Munich on April 12 1992. (go here: http://www.hitler.org/speeches/04-12-22.html if you want to read the rest of the speech). Words like these inflamed a people to go to war with the world. You yourself have probably used nearly all of these words at one point or another, yet strung together, they have an amazing effect. I’m not supporting Hitler. I am trying to say that we all have the potential to be demagogues.

So, words are important. They are important to me and I hope to you as well my dear readers.