The power of words is indescribable. It is the single most powerful tool available to humanity. The right words spoken in the right context can alter your mind, your self and the lens through which you view the world around yourself.
Personally, words have formed the totality of my personality and my perception of this world.
I have spent a major part of my years folded between the pages of books. In the absence of much human interaction, I fell in love with fiction. The romanticization of this world was endowed to me through the books I read. I formed bonds with characters of stories. The writers I read made me live love and loss through their stories. They made me feel all kinds of emotions in the same spirit as the protagonist of their works. I experienced adolescence by association. My vision is woven with words and thoughts and images in and out. Sometimes I feel as if I am comprised of letters, a figment of imagination and many times I forget the line between reality and fiction.
Words help you create your own world which is perfect for you. Words are shadows of forgotten names. When something in your life ends in a way you never wanted it to, it gets continued in the things you write.
Confucius said, “ Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know more.”
Words can light fires in the mind of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. Words can bring peace and happiness to your lost soul. Words can be the last source of hope and light in your life when you thought you were in the deepest abyss from where getting up was impossible.
You can find your greatest confidante in words. You feel an instant connect with someone who is able to clearly put in words what you might be going through.
Words can shape the future of a child and destroy the existence of an adult.
Even in the Indian history, certain slogans have reverberated throughout the length and breadth of time. When only a small percentage of the population was literate, only through words could the nationalist feelings be sparked in the hearts of all men and women. The slogan “Inqalaab Zindabaad” can still send chills down your spine. The patriotic poems, the columns in newspapers and journals and the speeches of dynamic leaders were all that transformed a place as large in extent as India into a “nation”. We felt united. We felt one.
(American Revolution: No taxation without representation.
French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.)
Words can heal. Words can hurt. Words can placate. Words can incite. Words can make you feel loved. Words can make you feel hated. Words can make you feel like nothing is impossible. Words can make you feel worthless. Words can make you remember all those memories. Words can make you forget yourself.
A relevant quote from my favorite author:
“Of all the weapons of destruction that man could invent, the most terrible and the most powerful was the word. Daggers and spears left traces of blood; arrows could be seen at a distance; poisons were detected in the end and avoided. But the word managed to destroy without leaving clues.” - Paulo Coelho.
Lastly, I would leave you with a question. I am sure we all have got physically hurt innumerable times but we don't suddenly get up in the middle of the night because of that one time we fell down the bicycle. We get up because of that one statement uttered by someone which had once left us severely heartbroken and emotionally wounded.
Isn't it?
Words also help you express yourself clearly. And what is life without clarity?
(Following is a passage I wrote in my diary a while ago.)
This made my day ❤