Termites in your Smile…

“There’s nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” Ideas. It’s always about the ideas, and always has been. Since the first spark drawn from a hunk of flint, all those many ages ago, our ideas have been the core of everything human.

And how do we sling ideas around? Language. Semantics, grammar, syntax and vocabulary.

“Blog” for example is just a shortening of the term “web log” condensed to one burst of a syllable. A web log was originally just an online journal. A place to post one’s thoughts online. Today, blogging offers lots more than just that — it’s interconnected, it’s tagging, it’s searchable, it’s linking, it’s a conversation…

All of which comes back to language, which is the container you and I use for carrying thoughts around. Without language, we could alert those around us, using various grunts, as to our mood, just like a dog or a cat. But there’s no way your pet can tell you “My parents were poor, but proud.” Not without language.

Conveying thoughts is why we use language – for example, this sentence conveys a thought from me to you. I have something to write and you have something to read. If I pick the right words and the right structure, the thought in your skull, upon reading, mimics the thought in my skull, upon writing. Now that’s a neat trick no matter how you look at it.

Written language is a time machine: I wrote this today and you’re reading it in the future, or perhaps I wrote this in the past and you’re reading it in the present. So, written language is a bit like a time machine, isn’t it? “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” “To be or not to be,” “Veni vidi vici.” Those thoughts come to us through the ages, because they were written down and we can read them anew, to get a sense for what the author was thinking at the time.

You are your own best audience. Turns out, the most likely audience for your own writing will be “you, in the future”. Other folks might see your prose now and then (emails, memos) and get a glint here or there, but usually you’re writing to yourself: “Get broccoli, milk and pasta.” “Pick mom up at the airport on Thursday.” “Assets over here, liabilities over there…” “Dear diary — I did something this week I shouldn’t have and need to examine my motivation…” Don’t marginalize these scribbles, they are the soul of everything that’s important. Sure, on occasion you’ll write something to someone else, too — and in each and every case you’re out to transmit some ideas.

Language is critical. Language is core to our humanity.

So what? Well, here’s where I dive into a bit of fantasizing:

If I were to teach middle-school English, I’d give the students a standing or running assignment. (Isn’t it interesting how those two can be synonyms here?) It would be to write new stanzas or verses for the Grinch song, and for Cruella De Vil’s song.

Minimum of three new stanzas each, please, before the end of the school year. And yes, you will get up in front of the class and sing it out loud. If you can stay on-key, great — if not, even better. If you have other songs you’d like to explore such as “My Favorite Things”, that’s great, and if you’d like to do more than three, that’s great too. But minimum of three for Cruella, plus three for the Grinch. If you wait until the last month of the school year, your classmates get to pick more songs for you to wrestle with. No arguments, no appeal.

Yep, that’s how I’d abuse my authority if I were a middle-school English teacher, to get them to think, and maybe even to smile, about using language to convey something fun. But even tho I’m not teaching Junior-High, I still take every opportunity to get kids to think, and I try to use interesting assignments to get’m going. Same with this blog — I hope to tweak your mind a little and get you to see the universe from a new perspective now and then.

So you might realize by now that my own mission statement is this: “I endeavor to get people to smile and to think (not necessarily in that order).” How’m I doing so far?