2024 - 005 Musing | On Words
‘”Uyy, hate is a strong word. Maybe you just don’t like it.”
I heard Kris Aquino said this in her talk show. It was quipped in Tagalog. It also happened many years ago. I suspect I was paraphrasing her. But I could never forget her face. It struck me until this day. She was both shocked and concerned after her guest uttered “hate” convincingly. This was the time I was naive and I know little about mostly about anything. Now, I am older, and as much as possible I avoid saying the hate when I don’t mean it. Something in Kris gesture of concern affected me a lot.
Words have power. The novelist and poet Margaret Atwood once said, a word after a word after a word is power. If you can say a word after another, without interference then you are free and have a certain kind of privilege. This is power, and a form of freedom. Words are tools available to us. The operative word here is the word tool. George Orwell demonstrated how words can be wielded in his novel 1984. The invention of the the word alternative facts on live TV is a tool manifesting another tool. John Steinbeck recognized this power and freedom comes with responsibility so he had written to his publisher to apologize, for he had destroyed the first manuscript of Grapes of Wrath after completing it. The novel was finished, but he could not turn it in because he created some characters who were devoid of dignity. The novel, for all intent and purposes, didn’t give any sense of hope for the readers and for the situation that inspired him to write the novel. It made him failed badly as a writer. Steinbeck knew people consume words.
The most amazing thing about words: words are part of us. Words are in the brain and body, “stored” biologically and chemically. Words are information and the basic building blocks of the story we tell ourselves.
Words we also utter interact with the environment. If I a say apple, my brain will command muscles in my throat and mouth to make the air vibrate—an energy in motion, part of the Universe that is in flux. My word will travel as sound waves that anyone with an “ear” can capture and interpret. Words flow like water.
I don’t think our humanity and soul can be summed with just words. There are many things going on inside and outside us that cannot be encapsulated with words. I can’t imagine Van Gogh being an essayist. We need other means of capturing the human condition. A society can have a word for this thing or event, while another society will need to scramble and rearrange hundred words to describe the same thing or event. This is poetry lost and gained, so feel free to choose your fighter:
“It is poetry that is lost in translation.” — Robert Frost
“It is poetry that is gained in translation.” — Joseph Brodsky
Words are powerful whether we take responsibility for them or not. I don’t want to end the post in a didactic tone, and I feel it would become one if I continue writing any further. So I’m leaving it with two of my favorite quotes about words:
“I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand & the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep & there are no words for that.” — Brian Andreas
Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.” — Susan Sontag
Lastly it is my greatest prayer that 51% of the words I say or think to be affirmations of the life I want to live even when it seems it's a struggle to live another day.