As Good As Your Words

It's hard to imagine something more ingenious, useful, entertaining, amazing and yet so taken for granted or even ignored by many people, the dictionary. I never stop to marvel, and admire, whoever that had invented and established the alphabetical system or order. Without a doubt the most arbitrary of all orders imaginable by men, and accepted by the whole world. Unlike the rest of other orders or systems, nobody at all in the universe had ever tried to change it.

All reality is contained in them because reality is put together mainly with words. Even us, the people, we are made of words; we are what we are because of our words. The dictionary contains all the words of our life, and that of other people. It is, in a way, a living organ of vision. When we go to the countryside, if we are not well informed of nature, we see trees. But if we are accompanied with knowledge in the matter, apart from trees, we see pines, willows, oaks, ashes, beeches, fir, sycamores ...

We form a part of the network, family or society, because there are words that connect us to it like: father, mother, brothers, grandparents, son, daughter, uncle ... friends, companions, teacher, professor, boss, employee, colleague, doctor, lawyer, street-cleaner ...

We listened to words even before we took our first mouthful of food, so necessary for our development as milk from our mother. Because we know that there are words difficult for us to swallow, like milk that has turned sour; and there are also words that are so sweet that make you feel like tasting syrup. There are words that make you dream of butterflies and roses, there are others that make you lose heart and hope, leave you feeling lost, desolate and desperate. The right words can sooth you, comfort you like a caress, and the harsh ones can sink you into the deepest dismay or hurt you like a knife through the heart.

Words have a common characteristic, they are empty, void of a soul. Until they are used. It's the readers who, through speech or writing, inhabit them, giving them spirit and making them alive, becoming part of ourselves, saying and using the right words to sympathize, to comfort, to encourage, to express friendship and love ... And to listen to them, so as to receive the same.

I like dictionaries. Or to be more exact, I am fascinated by words. A world without words is not just a mute one, but a world both deaf and blind, opaque, grey, sad and gloomy. Purposeless and joyless. Each word that's forgotten or lost is like a small part of our being lost too, and each new word we learn, the reality stretches, our horizon expands and our intellectual capacity multiplies.

Tags:Words,Dictionary

• Current Mood: accomplished