tongue...
"Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his soul from troubles."
--Proverbs 21:23
Billions of individual human beings cover the face of the earth. Each one has a cranium and a lump of gray matter inside. I happen to have been born in a rural community in northern Utah. As a result, I speak English. I was raised by a white mother and a white father, and was surrounded primarily by white, christian, middle-class people. As a result, I have come to expect a certain standard of living, a modest amount of social interaction, and food on my plate without fail. I generally think of myself as being happy, moral, and educated.
Three hundred miles south of me lives another white male. He was born into a broken home, and grew up surrounded by the necessary ingredients of methamphetamines. He grew up surrounded by drug addicts and a meager existence.
Another person lives in Miami. He is black and idolizes rappers. He understands gang violence and sees it as a part of daily life. He, too, generally thinks of himself as being happy and is striving to get ahead in his world.
A little girl grew up in Indonesia in a corrugated steel hut. She is now a mother, and has three children whom she loves more than anything. She works in a factory making an american product, and prays that her children will be protected each day. She recently lost a son in a tsunami which plowed onto the beaches a few miles from her home.
Each individual is living their own life, and we try our hardest to communicate with one another. We rely on speech, which can be reduced to the following: "Air enters the lungs via the normal breathing mechanism. As air is expelled from the lungs through the trachea, the tensed vocal cords within the larynx are caused to vibrate by the air flow. The air flow is chopped into quasi-periodic pulses which are then modulated in frequency in passing through the throat, the oral cavity, and possibly nasal cavity. Depending on the positions of the various articulators (i.e., jaw, tongue, velum, lips, mouth), different sounds are produced." (http://ispl.korea.ac.kr/~wikim/research/speech.html)
Considering the complexity of human thought processes, this becomes a rather feeble way of expressing things. How can one harness the multitude of simultaneous thoughts and feelings and force them into mere syllables? How can I expect another person to agree with me on the significance of the words that I employ? The speaker and the listener are expected to have an agreement on certain sounds and their meanings, but given the spectrum of possible life experiences and word association, can one ever expect to be truly understood by another person? Throw gestures and facial expressions into the mix, and the speaker is banking on luck that the listener will be on the same page.
Things are difficult between two people of the same socio-economic status, but they get even uglier across lines of economic standing, culture, country, gender, etc. It is a breeding ground for intolerance and hate. It all stems, not from being so different, but from the problems of human communication.
Telepathy. It's the only answer. But I probably won't experience it in my lifetime. Wish I could. So all I'm left with is my self-control and the ability to guard my words and speak prudently. I fail each day. Some days worse than others. But King Solomon was a very wise man.
posted by Stoker White @ 10:31 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I get your point. I often think about the way words fail us and how what we say and communicate is usually just next to what we really mean. Communication is imperfect, which is why actions speak louder than words. However, there is no way to recapture what the unguarded tongue let loose. It's too bad, but words have power, precisely for the reasons your post illuminates -- that it takes an entire history and social context to give a word its full meaning. You are aware of how over use of a word reduces its social meaning. That's why 'swear' words lose their edge the more prevalent they become in our society.
Your entry is poignant and well-written. Your case is a sad, but good one. I can't tell if you're justifying the mistake your entry prompts, or if you're empathizing with the one you have offended through idle words. Or perhaps you're simply ruminating on the sad limits of spoken communication. Whatever it is, I empathize with the damage a misplaced word can do. A relationship is a fragile house of cards and sometimes it seems the slightest gust sends it tumbling. We would all do well if the houses we built were made of brick and built upon bedrock.
Your writing betrays your inner beauty and I feel certain all will be repaired soon.
There is no way to recapture or edit words after they have been spoken. True. But I believe that each individual should listen responsibly, recognizing that words are not truth, and only sometimes accurately reflect it.
Let's give the example of a relationship. Actions speak louder than words, but words still speak. So one should take a running total of words and actions combined. We will assign a number (let's call it the relationship coefficient [RC]) to the current situation of the relationship. We will consider -1 to be a purely hateful relationship. +1 will be an impossibly perfect relationship. 0 is an indifferent relationship.
Now, each good word or act should affect the RC in one way or another. Let's say I meet a person and they say something offensive to me. -0.7 That is the RC right now. Then they stop talking to me. 0.0 The RC is now -0.35. It is, I conceed, never this simple. But a loving mother may say something hurtful, but after years of good words and acts her RC is +0.87. The -0.5 becomes fairly insignificant, and can quickly be resolved, especially keeping in mind what we've been talking about.
Basically, what I'm doing is ruminating on the sad limits of spoken communication. But obviously, I recently experienced something that led me to think about these things. And yes, I feel bad. I empathize. I hope to fix things by speaking and acting in a more positive manner.
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