Empty Words

Words that are only understood by the intellect and not by the heart and the body, enter the mind with no place to anchor and flit aimlessly about in the intellectual caverns looking for a place to roost.  Words without direct experience behind them are weightless and fluffy. They make sound but have little impact. They just float in the ether with nowhere to go.

Knowledge is the same way. To really know something is to experience it, otherwise our knowledge is based on assumptions and speculations connected by a loose conglomerate of related ideas.  The idea of India is quite different from the experience of being there. The idea of sushi is quite different than the experience of eating it. The idea of the pain of childbirth is radically different from the bloody, gut wrenching experience of it.

Shared experience give words weight. When we are experiencing a particularly difficult time, there is a major difference between words spoken by someone who has had a similar experience and one who has not. The one who has, can make one simple knowing statement or give us a certain look or touch on the shoulder and the comfort is immediate. The one who hasn’t, may attempt the same thing, but the result isn’t the same.

On their own, words have no power to convey meaning or bring comfort. It is rather the tone and intention with which they were conveyed that imbues them with that. Backed by experience, whether direct or shared, adds color, meaning and weight that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

All of us have the experience of being spoken at or listening to another’s monologue, held hostage by that person’s need to hear his or her own voice. There is no exchange here. We are simply witnesses to the internal ramblings of another made external.  Nothing more than being an innocent bystander to a person who happens to be thinking out loud.

Words then, are what we make of them. They do our bidding as they move from us into the air or onto the page, which is why it is preferable to be conscious when we communicate. Words can destroy just as easily as they can create. They can wound just as easily as they can heal. They can change everything in an instant. It is we, the gods of our own universes, who decide their fate.

Perhaps if we really understood what a powerful tool words are, we’d handle them with more care and respect; we’d practice more silence; we’d think before we speak; and we’d cease and desist adding more empty words to an already noisy world.

Imagine that.