Yostivanich

The ques­tion is almost stu­pid to answer because on cer­tain level they must mat­ter or else I wouldn’t pub­lish my thoughts. So words must mat­ter to you because well you are read­ing this and you most likely com­mu­ni­cate with soci­ety. There is a very good rea­son that being deaf and/or mute is an imped­i­ment to hav­ing a nor­mal life. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the lifeblood of soci­ety, at some level we all need to com­mu­ni­cate for a host of reasons.

So words mat­ter to the extent that one needs them to com­mu­ni­cate with oth­ers in soci­ety, but on a deeper level do words really matter?

Hmmm, okay, well I am try­ing to con­vince you of cer­tain posi­tion, so I must feel that words mat­ter in the sense that the mean­ing of the words strung together can form a hope­fully coher­ent argu­ment that sways you to accept part or all of my posi­tion. But again we aren’t quite at the heart of the mat­ter of do words matter.

Well let me first clar­ify the ques­tion a lit­tle bit, by do words mat­ter, I mean do the words that we speak do they make a dif­fer­ence on our lives. In other words if some­one insults you, does that hurt your feelings?

It’s an inter­est­ing prob­lem, mainly because we all know that words mat­ter because we use them all the time to com­mu­ni­cate, to debate, to show emo­tion, a host of things only hap­pen because of words.

Imag­ine try­ing to tell some­one that you love them, with­out being able to talk to them. Just try to see how to express that emo­tion with­out the words to go along with it. Sure you can buy them gifts, give them your time, make love to them, but does any of that really truly express your feel­ings over this per­son? I doubt it.

Now that I have danced around the issue enough, let me just answer the ques­tion. Words don’t mat­ter it’s the intent and the feel­ing behind the words that really matter.

Words them­selves I believe have no power in and of them­selves, it’s the emo­tion and pur­pose behind the words that give words power. Words are just that words, abstract con­cepts strung together in a mean­ing­ful man­ner to describe some­thing. Imag­ine a beau­ti­ful poem, but being read in a monot­one voice:

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.
by John Donne

AS vir­tu­ous men pass mildly away,
And whis­per to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
“Now his breath goes,” and some say, “No.”

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
’Twere pro­fa­na­tion of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Mov­ing of th’ earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trep­i­da­tion of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sub­lu­nary lovers’ love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, ’cause it doth remove
The thing which ele­mented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That our­selves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls there­fore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expan­sion,
Like gold to aery thin­ness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin com­passes are two ;
Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.

And though it in the cen­tre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hear­kens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firm­ness makes my cir­cle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

Now reread the poem, but this time give it emo­tion. It makes all the dif­fer­ence in the world. Words them­selves are basi­cally worth­less, but words with emo­tion and feel­ing are indeed very powerful.

* Just on a side note, I absolutely love this poem, hence I used it.