This is a sign posted in a store in Key West. I have no idea how old it is or what it really means other than if you are not Spanish, English or Bahamian, you can talk while reading is in progress.
People talk a lot. People say things when they don't even realize that others may be influenced by what they say. Words are reactionary, arbitrary, but never stationary. They are twisted and folded and hung out to dry, used wrongly, sometimes to sparingly in truth and taken out of context just so a person can admire the way they strung them together.
They are written on subway walls, tenement halls - oh wait that's Simon and Garfunkel - but it's true. Words are written in a lot of places you wouldn't think they would be found.
Some people use words of encouragement as often as they can, looking for ways to uplift someone's spirits. Others might lean toward a black hole of cynicism, for reasons none other than that they can. Some try to express love in words that people just won't take from them, and there are those who spew hateful words into the universe because someone hurt them as a child.
The world is filled up with words in songs of all sorts, books of all kinds, notes on refrigerators and in lunch boxes, blogs, letters, and threats in a past due notice. legal papers, and precious misspelled words from a child to a parent on a crumpled, stained piece of paper that is worth it's weight in gold,
and the world will still hold a trillion zillion more words in places unknown and unnamed before we have exhausted our stay here, and what am I going on about?
I just want to ask:
What are you saying? What are you saying to people when you speak, when you write, when you sing? If anyone listens to you or reads your words, you are taking up space in their brain. That is a responsibility of a sort.
Be smart. Be kind. Don't scare people. Don't be mean to people. Be prayful. Be encouraging. Be good. Be diligent to make this world a better place. And, why not? After all, it's the only place we have for this moment in time. There may be no words in the next world. But what if there are only your words in the next world? Will you enjoy hearing them?
Other than that, it's a Friday on the planet and today
Jackson Browne, classic rock's eternally young poet of choosing badly in relationships and then going forward in your life, is 61.
President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.
And, good grief, we bombed the moon. Google it.
Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne
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