The Power of Words

A week ago, my friend Charlie brought me up short by explaining something to me about myself that I needed explained to me; it was about remorse or better yet the perception that I lack it.  


Periodically, in my life I have had to stop and look at something about myself usually words that apply to me, or more often than not words about myself that I apply to others judgmentally, blind to the "log in my own eye."  Words as my friend Gayle who writes the great Gayle's Bard Blog have enormous power.  Harold Bloom, in writing about Shakespeare offered the view that Shakespeare "invented the world" because Shakespeare's plays, and poetry created both the language we use (albeit as language has evolved) and the archetypes for our comedy and tragedy.  Even allowing for hyperbole, Bloom's point has tremendous salience.  


God created the universe, and God created our universe with the words, "Let there be light, and there was light."  Fiat lux. 


I did not realize when I began this blawg that in writing about stories taken from local websites I would be looking at so much darkness and evil.  Purely evil souls engaged in senseless morally bad acts of violence and hatred.  Child abuse, child rape, children killing one another adults killing children, heinous stomach turning butchery.  Narcissism run rampant ruining the live of naive and innocent bystanders, sudden unexplainable death and loss.  While the problems of my own creation are bad and depressing enough, I confess that I have been weighted down by this darkness, and in my career I thought I saw it all, and wrestled with pure evil thinking it had no power over me.  I was foolish and naive.  


There is a purpose in life and in part I am coming to believe that it is to receive and share light.  Unfortunately when you throw open the curtains on a long darkened room, you see chaos and filth.  This seems to me to be what is happening as I am letting light back into my tight little turd of a heart.  I have roared through this universe of mine oblivious to the power of my words and negative judgments, and while I still plan to write as long as I am able to, I believe that my only hedge against the darkness is to bring light.  The only way to bring light is through carefully choosing the words I use.


Does that mean a snark-free Bad Lawyer, not a chance.  It does mean that the goal in looking at or talking about the darkness that abounds is to remind you and me that we have a duty.  Let there be light.