Words

"You can not be responsible for how clearly your message is received, only for how clearly it is sent."--Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God

"I love words. I thank you for hearing my words. I want to tell you something about words that I think is important. They're my work, they're my play, they're my passion. Words are all we have, really. We have thoughts, but thoughts are fluid...then we assign a word to a thought and we're stuck with that word for that thought. So be careful with words. I like to think that the same words that hurt can heal, it's a matter of how you pick them."--George Carlin, "The Seven Words You Can't Say On Television"

Words.

I play with words. I wallow in words. I'll hear a word, and if the situation calls for it (and often if it doesn't), I'm off and running with it. A rhyming dictionary stands forever at the ready: can a pun be formulated out of this word? Can I alliterate it, literarily? Is there a longer, more esoteric word that better fits the occasion? A shorter, pithier one? I want to hear more. Tell me more words. Every other word I hear conjures up a seemingly endless pile of mental associations, from songs to fragments of verse to snapshots of the last time I heard that word. I can't turn the word-spigot off, even if I'd want to: it's every bit as ingrained in me as music and love.

I've learned over time not to say every word I'm thinking, or even most of them. (At the age of two, my father bestowed upon me the nickname 'Macaw', because, he said, "all I ever did was squawk and shit".) The shit I can't help, but the squawking I've toned down to a dull roar. It's not that my words are dirty (much): it's that they're often deep, and most people don't want deep words, especially if they pertain to deep feelings, which I have in abundance. Most people would rather the words be kept shallow, perfunctory, and easy to digest and even easier to ignore if necessary. That said, you can tell how comfortable I am in any given social situation by how much you hear from me. I'm the opposite of most people: if I'm uncomfortable I'll seek to fill every silence, not always appropriately: if I'm truly at home in your presence (there are about five people alive for whom this applies), I can stay completely silent for an hour. Very much present, but silent. Sipping your soul, savouring it. Sometimes there are no words. Sometimes words get in the way.

 I'd rather listen to other people's words, now. After about four decades of hearing words, I just want to hear more. Thankfully, I'm not the teenager I once was: there was a time when I overanalyzed every word I heard, looking for meaning that was never there. (I'm still, occasionally, stung by a chilly silence, virtual or real, in the wake of words I have offered...but almost always now I feel stung because I miscommunicated. If someone has misread or misheard my words, that is never their fault but always mine. And while every problem I get into with words can be solved with more words, choosing exactly what words to employ becomes a nontrivial exercise at that point.)

I do choose my words very carefully. I make a serious effort not to employ filler, meaningless words that add nothing to the conversation. My words have weight behind them.  If, as a for-instance,  you hear "I love you" from me, it means everything you think it does and probably a whole hell of a lot more besides. There's a lot of love in this here being. But--try to maintain the dichotomy here, it's critical--what matters above all is the weight you assign to it. You need never return the sentiment (which is, trust me, more than a sentiment): I'd be happy hearing "thanks, I love me, too!"

I never hear that. Why do I never hear that?

I've asked that question before, in one of my better-received Breadbin entries, and I will continue to ask it as long as I keep running across loveable people who see themselves as anything but. It takes a whole bunch of extra words to explain to these people why they are so loveable. I could easily spend an hour enumerating the reasons...except they tend to wither and wilt after thirty seconds. It's so sad, to have that much invested in a delusional self-image that you'll hotly deny any evidence presented to the contrary. It can make you cry. It has made me cry. Because if you really believe you're unloveable--and some of the most beautiful people I have ever met have really believed they were--you're missing out on so much love.

This falls into the "you teach what you have to learn" category for me. I. too, suffer from bouts of low self-esteem. I was in a bad one about three weeks ago until a couple of people combined to shoot me out if it as if I was propelled from a love cannon. Gosh, that sounds filthy. You know what, though? When I'm feeling that low about myself, I act unloveable. I'm whiny and trod-upon and jealous (yes, sometimes I actually feel that awful emotion) and just totally unattractive. Surely the corollary is true, that someone with self-esteem can much more easily win the esteem of others?

Doubtless I'll spill more words on this topic in the weeks and months and years to come. In the meantime, exchanging words with me is the best way to touch me. I don't need things. I have enough things, and enough money to get things. Words, though...there can never be enough words.