15 FEBRUARY 2023 COMPASSION

We have all heard the expressions, “to turn a deaf ear,” and “to turn a blind eye.” We have seen the proverbial wise monkeys from Japanese wisdom who “see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.” And, there is the childhood rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Yet many of us have been hurt by words. When we are young, we tend to believe what others tell us about ourselves, whether it was words uttered by our parents, our teachers, or our classmates, some of us reach adulthood with emotional scars that we carry throughout our lifetime.

Language and words have become for human beings, a tool for our survival. Being a wordsmith myself, I am fascinated by words and the concepts they invoke. Words can be strung together to create a poignant poem, or they can be arranged into the murky quagmire of difficult to decipher legal jargon. Words are used to sell us things we don’t actually need. They are used to fill the empty spaces in our head when we haven’t learned to be comfortable with silence.

We must learn to use the tool of language with care because when words are spoken continually or when our thoughts become a raging river, we are unable to hear the quiet messages that emerge from within. When we turn down the volume or turn a deaf ear to the noise of others, when we close our eyes to outer stimuli, and when we silence our own incessant rambling, we are able to hear our own soul whispering in our inner ear. We are able to hear the cries of Mother Earth, to see her pain, and to respond from that quiet place of compassion.