I think that words are beautiful. The way they can shape your imagination, the way they can define your emotions, the way they can rule your thoughts-it’s quite incredible really. From something as simple as “hello” to something as profound as the “Great Perhaps” Francois Rabelais talks about, words can encompass all.
Words can make you shudder with fear. They can also make you an aficionado of something you never thought you’d enjoy. They might be manipulated into a philippic that destroys you. They can make you experience the fuzzy and insouciant feeling you get after eating a home cooked meal. They compose the power to express the strongest prurient emotions in the simplest of words. A word can show you an aspect of your personality that you weren’t aware of.
Words can also make you realize the sheer intensity of feelings. It just might be our door into other people’s minds. What they think? What they feel? How things influence them? After all, what’s so special about “I love you” that even though we know how the other person feels, we are still longing for them to voice it?
Words make us feel like we belong. Inking our thoughts in words, makes us realize that we’re not alone in this world and that someone somewhere just might understand what we’re trying to say instead of turning it into a homily. They serve to be spiritual emolument of sorts. It is through words that we can escape from ourselves and into a persona. In hopes of preventing ourselves from immuring into a prisoner of our own mind, we adapt the panache of a protagonist, or maybe wander into a matrix of a simple village to find solace from the daily hustle bustle of life, or maybe to a foray of Napoleon Bonaparte in anticipation of feeling alive just one more time.
Words aren’t restricted to one genre. No one browbeats them to stick to one language. The magnitude of a word is not commensurate in people. Words are like a diaphanous sheet of paper-so vivid and yet so vague.
Words are also abstract. There is no limit to the perception of a word. The word “red” can mean a billion things for a billion people ranging from love to blood to happiness to marriage and so on. Unlike numbers, where everything is simplified, words tend to complicate. You think of a sacrosanct word a certain way your whole life, scared that by thinking differently you might lead it to its funeral without any obsequies, until someone writes it in a different light and you’re left in awe. You’re amazed at its ingenuity. And then you experience an estranged state of being where your mind battles between the tendentious thoughts and the enlightened ideas. It’s like waking up the wrong side of the bed. You’re so accustomed to conformity that it takes you a while to readjust your brain and for it to realize the vicissitude.
But maybe you’re one of those lucky one’s who doesn’t need words. Maybe you can paint your heart out on a canvas. Or maybe play notes that replace this word vomit. Or maybe run miles until you know you have poured out your soul in sweat and blistered feet. Who knows how your brain functions. This may seem like complete rambling to you and might cause you to suffer a systemic mental breakdown. Or maybe the best thing you’ve ever heard.
