Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Lost in transition?

Well, this as many of others posts; is unsettling energy flux of my neuronal activity concocted by imagination, contemplation and rationalization that my little mind can fathom. This post is inspired by a little fight with my little sister - who uses the F word to express anger. Well, who am i to judge, when i myself so oftentimes than not use the S word conveniently. Yeah, I am working on it and hopefully get over it, InshAllah!

Anger expression I think has more deeper reasons that even I can completely pen down (type down?) myself. It has something to do with lack of understanding of this complex life, lesser patience and broken spirit of will power. It has something to do with unsatisfied contribution to/by the person/society, a greater deficit margin on self standard scale of people in general (including self).

Hold it! I ain't giving you gyan on etymology of 'anger' here. Neither am i giving anger management classes. People, who know me well will start laughing even if I step into that role for a sec.

So lets get started with the subject on hand and this is how it goes:

As humans we have unique power to translate each others life without physically even moving an inch. I am sure, all of us have been moved by a small gesture (positive or negative) on the road, in bus, etc. Though, we have never met before and might not cross our ways again, we are affected by each other somehow. Sometimes, it helps break and sometimes strengthens -our prejudices. Its just in us.

Of the many things that contribute to such unrecognized and unrealized power is "Word".

Ever tried imagining the words as sounds without any meaning to it. Imagine, and you will find yourself either thinking or laughing. Well, as history records; words came into being because of certain value or quality it denotes. I totally recommend reading, 'A is for Ox' for a basic understanding and if you want dig deep" Grammatical man -information, entropy, language and life' - Good luck with 'scientific' philosophy of language.

Well, like humans (for those who believe in souls), each and every word has two important aspect to them:

a. Physical aspect
b. Spiritual aspect

The physical aspect stands for its sound, its language or scripting. I call is physical because you can sense it with the help of those 5 senses, hence adheres to the scientific decorum of evidence. Even though a figment of human imagination, yet, they exist. The physical aspect of word is to brain as output device is to computer. Its the sa re ga ma of language. Yes, it includes all those aspects of language that most of us had tough time learning especially the grammar. Since all of us are aware of this aspect, let me not dwell into it a lot.

Now, comes the most important part - the spiritual side. As, I mentioned before, each word has an attributed/quality value to it. Imagine a word 'beauty' - it has certain aesthetic quality to it. Same stands for many words like courage, faith, believe, etc. Have you ever come across those films/cartoons wherein the 'subject' opens the age old relic books and you see some power or rather light emitted from it?Now, if you ask me - that is not actually the light light but the enlightening light. In the sense that it awakens in a person a sense of attributes and dawns upon wisdom. May be, you can better understand this if you have read something and din't understand but upon reading again and again -new concepts open up on you like never before. it is very important for a word to hold its value - its like 'hiss' in urdu from which the word 'ahsaas' is derived. A man is equal to dead if he/she doesn't have any ahsaas (physically or morally).

If you read classics, you can actually feel the language. Today, the language has turned into a sham rather than that spirit. People don't think and speak. They just speak and more so it has become a cool thing to use derogatory language. And when you correct, they just come up with a simple convenient answer, " Oh common! Gimme a break. We don't mean F when we say it. Its just like an expression. You don't have to be so serious about it". It is the lack of seriousness sometimes that is disturbing.

Really! Think about it. Your friend calling you again and again with those words out of love. How disgusting is that love that cant give you respect to your being. There are many words on my list that have lost their spirit during transition into modernized world full of pressures - liar, B*, A*, etc (nauzbillah!).

Each word has its disposition and is meant for certain purpose. Hence, we have positive and negative words, degrees for same meaning words. Words moved people, made revolutions happen, bring 'Haqh' (Ah! such a beautiful word) to people. Please, respect language and people at the same time. Be graceful as much as you can. We don't need to be abusive all the time. There is time for everything but it takes much courage not to fall down from grace of language.

Let me end with a little quote for the spirit of word, ' Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes; and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons. ~Aldous Huxley'


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