The World of Words

• Have you ever read a passage in a book that was so perfectly written you had to go back and read it again.  Maybe you were so smitten by the way the words danced with one another that you wrote the passage down.  Being a fan of Dean Koontz, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Nicholas Sparks, Dale Carnegie, and Mitch Albom, I do a great deal of the read, re-read, and write it down routine.
• Have you ever had a disagreement with someone and come away hurt because of something in particular they said?  You’ve moved past the actual cause of the confrontation - and even admit that it was trivial - but this one little thing that flew out of their mouth has lodged in your heart and….well, it hurts.
• Have you ever been on the other side - where the words flew out of your own mouth and you’d have given anything in the world to take them back?
• Have you ever read an ad or seen a commercial and wanted what they were pitching.  This one owns me in the worst way!  I have never played poker in my life, but I was reading a review my husband had written on Hightide-Web’s Review Blog for Poker tables and other Poker necessities.  By the time I finished reading it, I wanted to build a room onto the house just for poker.  A game I’ve never played. Sure, I’m an easy sell, but it’s usually for things I can use!

Words have always been fascinating to me.  Their power to move us, conform us, and ultimately change us…or at least our way of thinking….leaves me in awe.  We spend so much time being careful with our driving (well some of you do), with handling knives, with hot water, with germs, etc.  Yet one of the most powerful things in the world….our words…we seldom even think twice about.

Sometimes, with all the acronyms bouncing around today, and all the butchering done to the spoken word - I worry about the future of words.  If our country ever gets to the point where people can’t communicate effectively with one another, we’re screwed. Royally.  Just something to think about and to pass on to the LOL generation.

My aunt sent me a great e-mail recently about this very thing, the power of words.  Naturally, it was right up my mental alley - and I thought there might be similar mental alleys out there. (God bless your heart is all I can say.)

One day, there was a blind man sitting on the steps of a building
with a hat by his feet and a sign that read:

“I am blind, please help.”

A creative publicist was walking by and stopped to observe.
He saw that the blind man had only a few coins in his hat.
He dropped in more coins and, without asking for permission,
took the sign and rewrote it.

He returned the sign to the blind man and left.
That afternoon the publicist returned to the blind man and noticed
that his hat was full of bills and coins.

The blind man recognized his footsteps and asked
if it was he who had rewritten his sign
and wanted to know what he had written on it.

The publicist responded: “Nothing that was not true. I just wrote the
message a little differently.” He smiled and went on his way.

The new sign read: “Today is Spring and I cannot see it.”

Learning what to say changes everything.

Have a great weekend!

Joi