The Power of Words

       Nothing beats a cup of coffee and a good book on a rainy day. As I went through my bookshelf this book caught my attention----- All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum. I laughed at the idea  but I must admit the title was catchy. When I held the book in my  hands I realized-- yeah, this book scored some extra points. I can remember when I was young and curious,I had so many questions that I thought only grown-ups could answer. But hey now that I grew older, at age 23, yeah nobody knows shit. Really, grown-ups may have a lot more questions than kids. Even tougher questions.Maybe, all I really need to know I already learned in Kindergarten, whatever comes after it are things that will only lead us to hundreds of "?".

       I can't help but share this part of the book which gives us a bit of advice.

       In the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific some villagers practice a unique form of logging. If a tree is too large to be felled with an ax, the natives cut it by yelling at it. Woodsmen with special powers creep up on a tree just at dawn and suddenly scream at it at the top of their lungs. They continue this for thirty days. The tree dies and falls over. The theory is that the hollering kills the spirit of the tree. According to the villagers, it always works.

       Ah, those poor naive innocents. Such quaintly charming habits of the jungle. Screaming at trees, indeed. How primitive. Too bad they don;t have the advantages of modern technology and the scientific mind.

       Me? I yell at my wife. And yell at the telephone and the lawn  mower. And yell at the TV and the newspaper and my children. I've been known to shake my fist and yell at the sky at times.

       Man next door yells at his car a lot. And this summer I heard him yell at a stepladder for most of an afternoon. We, modern, urban, educated folks yell at traffic umpires and bills and banks and machines- especially machines. Machines and relatives get most of the yelling.

       Don't know what good it does. Machines and things just sit there. Even kicking doesn't always help. As for people, well, the Solomon islanders may have a point. Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit  in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts.

Even at a very young age, we were told by our parents not to yell at people. It's bad. Just bad. Now that we are grown-ups and we've experienced the different phases of our lives, we may have forgotten this simple lesson our parents taught us.