|
| The chronicles of Sanjeev Dwivedi |
Words have no meaning
But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
-Lord Byron, English poet, Don Juan, 1819
People say words have power. Do a search and you will find numerous instances of the same. The odd thing about the phrase words have power is that it seems it is very context dependent. Words have power for them who associate meaning to words.
And then there is the story of Yudhisthara that I read in highschool. Yudhishithira was a man of his word. Even as a kid he would not do something that he did not completely understand or something whose implications were unclear to him. So, the story goes that once Guru Dronacharya asked all the students to learn the lesson "Always speak the truth." Next day he asked all his students about what did he teach the previous day. Everyone recited it verbatim, "Always speak the truth!" Dronacharaya then came to Yudhisthara and asked him about the lesson, and Yudhisthara could just not recite it. He said, "I have not leart the lesson." Day after day, the same story continued. Finally, one day, after many days of not learning the lesson, Yudhisthara came to Dronacharya and said, "I have learnt the lesson!" That was the day when he really got the meaning of the words and was finally able to ingrain the lesson in his life. And so the story goes. So, the moral of the story is that Yudhisthira got it, but no one else did, although they all were able to memorize the lesson immediately.
And that is why, I think, words have no meaning if you do not attach any meaning to them. In any social intercourse, some people actually mean what they are saying and others do not. This leads to an interesting situation because the same words put two different people on two different pages. You might snicker and say, "Eh, take life lightly. Don't take it so seriously." But then where do you draw the border. How do you differentiate as to where one means what they are saying and where they are not. Context can probably help you define meaning of words, but then again, not everyone is on the same page; not everyone understands the context the same way. As they say, commonsense is not that common.
I just think, better be judicious and conservative with what you are saying lest you convey more than you mean.
| sanjeev@pratapgarh.com |