The Power of Language
Hello again, everyone. I hope you all had a wonderful week. I've always been fascinated with languages, and how they affect the way we interact with each other. It can mediate behavior, it can resolve differences. It can also create conflicts where there used to be none.
The language of music can bridge the gap between cultures; the language of art allows us to communicate to people of different eras, decades, and even centuries long after our own mortal time on this earth has since passed.
The language of love can move mountains.
Languages can be used to inspire, but it can also be used to demean. As we are all sadly aware, it can also at times be utilized to rouse hate, anger, anarchy, bitterness, and cruelty. Messages that succeed in conjuring up deep emotions, irrespective of the reasons or motives behind them, are truly powerful ones indeed.
Interesting thing is, sometimes the message from a story can trigger an entire plethora of reactions: from righteous indignation to deep sadness and a sense of loss, and perhaps with others a sense of total indifference and apathy — all these differing reactions coming from various people that have received the exact same message and heard the exact same story. Could they have interpreted things differently? That's always a possibility. It also depends on one's disposition toward the subject matter at hand, how involved one was with regard to the values and belief systems that the story's message have been trying to convey. Those that don't care may merely shrug and move on. Perhaps others may react differently.
Let me try to give an example of how one story could possibly evoke such a range of reactions from various people:
At the company that I used to work for I had a co-worker that had a house next to one of those really tall trees which comes in quite handy during those hot summer days as it would provide a bit of a needed shade and respite from the sorching rays of the afternoon sun. On one of its branches also apparently happened to be the place where a couple of crows have decided to build a nest from which these avian parents would use to raise their young family.
One morning my co-worker noticed a little baby crow lying helplessly on the sidewalk, unable to move and apparently injured from having fallen all the way down from its perch located high up above. Feeling sorry for the little thing and thinking that it would probably not last too long if she just left it there what with the dozens of neighborhood cats roaming around the area not unlike prison guards having been alerted to a possible jailbreak, she decided to take the tiny creature inside and, if nothing else, try to provide as much comfort to it as possible in what would most likely be its final hours.
Well, someone at the old Grim Reaper's Department of "Visitations" apparently either called in sick that day or never got the memo, because instead of just passing quietly sometime during the night in what she thought was to be the twilight of its very short life, the little critter instead fought back with such resolve and zest for life that my co-worker was quite shocked with the way it has responded quite positively to her acts of providing it with comfort and ministrations.
So instead of a little bit of a hasty vigil, cursory wake, and a quick funeral for the poor thing, the whole enterprise became a concerted recovery effort to nurse it back to health, instead. She took care to patiently hand-feed the little chick during mealtimes by stuffing little bits of food down its throat (as it was still too young to feed on its own), as well as to set aside a little area of her bedroom for the bird so that it will have its own little place to stay and recuperate.
Her efforts were eventually rewarded when the baby crow eventually seemed to have gotten its normal range of motion back (admittedly a very limited range of motion, of course, given that it was such a young little thing) as well as a sudden surge in curiosity as can be seen by its interest in any little thing that it can find within its reach — a very encouraging sign, no doubt, that it was well on its way to recovery.
Fast forward now just a little bit to a point in time when the little crow has grown up to the point where it was seen to be flapping and stretching its wings every so often, and so my co-worker felt that it was time to help the bird with its flying lessons. She now completely cleaned out her room of any sharp or breakable objects that she could find so that the bird won't end up hurting itself when it crashed into things while it was still trying to figure out the mechanics of flight. Every afternoon from that point on was devoted to both of them working together on getting the bird the needed exercise to strenghten its flight muscles, and get it confident enough to the day that she knew would come when she would eventually have to release it back out into the world to fend for itself.
Despite the lack of clear knowledge and proper training on both their part, the crow eventually did learn enough from their little bedroom sessions to give my co-worker the confidence that it somehow at least has grasped the rudiments of flying. She was a bit concerned at first about how to get it to learn the more advanced nuances of flight involving such things as gliding and soaring, banking and coasting, and other things of that nature but she eventually decided that the now-not-so-little crow will just have to figure these things on its own out there in the open skies by itself, as it will then have all the time (and space) in the world with which to practice these things to its heart's content.
With every passing day the big farewell seems to be creeping closer and closer. The crow is becoming more and more independent and is much more sure of itself now, relying less and less on its surrogate mommy for basic necessities. Eventually, my co-worker decided that the fateful day has indeed finally arrived and that it was time to let the bird go, let it live its life the way it was meant to be, and let it face the outside world on its own. It was a bit of a bittersweet moment for her, knowing she's losing a baby that she has nursed from injury to complete health and is now a spry, young juvenile bird but knowing she did a good job at least gave her some satisfaction.
They went outside the front door together for the historic flight, the crow snugly tucked underneath her arm, its eyes bright and alert, its little head turning this way and that, surveying its new surroundings with deep, intense interest.
Finally, she took the bird in her hands and with one flinging motion she hoisted the bird up out toward the heavens, and it instantly took to flight as if it had already been used to doing so for years. Its wings steadily beating a rhythmic pace, my co-worker glanced at the steadily decreasing figure as it clambered towards the sky, shooting straight up like an arrow towards an unseen target. It never looked back even once as it then started skimming the rooftops of the neighboring houses until it eventually disappeared from sight.
After a few more seconds of staring out at the now empty sky, she went back indoors and softly closed the door behind her.
A few weeks had since gone by and she was now slowly starting to get accustomed to her old routine once again — the one that she used to have before the sight of an injured bird lying helplessly on the sidewalk necessitated a tiny bit of a change in her life and forced her to plan her life around her little temporary guest.She was rummaging through her purse to fish out the key to get inside the house one afternoon when she happened to hear the furious flapping of wings behind her. Before she could turn around to figure out what the commotion was a crow gently landed on her shoulder, with its head cocked back at an angle so it could stare at her face. The little bird had stopped by to say hi!!! Except it was not so little now, it seemed that it had grown quite a bit since they last saw each other. As she looked back at it with pleasant surprise, she noticed that it had something shiny on its beak: it was a bottle cap.
Instinctively, she held out her hand to it. It dropped the cap onto her palm, gave one last Aaaack! of farewell, and flew off once again back to its own natural realm.
And so it was like that for a while, with the crow stopping by perhaps once or twice a month to stay in touch and to drop off little bits of trinkets like buttons or maybe a piece of washer that it may have come across and figured that my co-worker would like and appreciate having. Or maybe it was doing it as its own little way of saying thanks, to pay her back for her good deed. In any case, it always made it a point to fly off immediately afterwards, perhaps taking care to make sure not to overstay its welcome.
My co-worker wondered during one of these visits where the crow was staying. Did it have its own nest close by or did it need to fly quite a bit in order to reach her? Had it met some new crow friends yet? She eventually decided not to dwell on such matters. The bird clearly had its own life now, and seems to be doing quite well on its own, thank you. And she was certainly glad to have found a new friend that seems to delight in stopping by every once in a while for them to catch up on old times in their own unique way.
Another month went by and this one particular day turned out to be the worst workday in the entire week for her so far. She was at her wit's end. The deadlines seemed to come out of the woodwork, there was a crisis every which way she turned, everyone needed her help first with this thing and then that, and when all was said and done she didn't manage to leave the office until quite a few hours later than she normally does.
As she was crossing the street towards her front yard she noticed a bit of a dark lump in the sidewalk near her front yard. It was hard to tell exactly what it was at first, what with the fast receeding daylight harkening the end of the day and the inevitable arrival of dusk, but somehow something told her — with the sickening feeling coming from deep down the pit of her stomach accompanied by an uncontrollable sense of rising nausea — that this was not going to end well at all.
She walked slowly, crouched down, and stared sadly at the prone figure of her friend crow, its lifeless body sprawled grotesquely in the pavement, quite unlike the majestic image that she had grown accustomed to seeing it all though the months of watching it soar to the skies on its way home after one of its sporadic visits to her.
A piece of coin can be found on the ground close to its beak. It had stopped by to bring her another gift.
Asking around the neighborhood afterwards, she found out that the neighborhood kid who happens to love shooting at things with his bb gun noticed the bird during one of his "hunting" sessions. The bird was standing on the sidewalk, the coin in its beak, waiting patiently for her to arrive.
The kid slowly approached, taking care not to spook his prey. The neighbors said that the crow had already noticed him even before he got close, but since it never did develop a healthy fear of humans while it was growing up, it just stood there staring questioningly at the kid while he aimed the barrel of his bb gun point blank at the head of the bird and pulled the trigger.
