X if for X-Ray: Your Words Pierce My Very Soul

Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything.

You read and you’re pierced.

~ Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Back in January, I began the One Page a Day Challenge and immediately threw away my quill.  Now in April, I’m participating in the A to Z Blogging Challenge and prepping for a Wilderness Writers’ Retreat.  I need ink, a stiff drink and therapy.

W

ords are dangerous. 

That’s why the First Amendment is, well, first.  The freedom to speak one’s mind is actually a guarantee of all freedoms. 

Because when you strip away that right, it keeps your enemy from stirring up support for the opposing side.

Words are powerful.  They have the power to reach the isolated, to inflame the broken-hearted, to comfort the wounded.

Words also have the power to hurt, to wound, to tear down. Especially words spoken to us in anger, frustration or stress.  And if those words are spoken to us in our formative years, they are likely to remain with you forever.

X is for X-ray: Words Pierce the Soul

That’s why it’s so important to respect words and to choose what we read and what we say, wisely.  Because they can even engender feelings in us that are not our own.  Or at least, they are not on the surface.

Now that's a book boyfriend!
Image Credit: Unknown, Google Search

Case in point, I just finished reading a book where the female protagonist goes through a vomit-inducing tornado of emotions.  I felt her agony, her moral qualms, the pain of her choices. 

My visceral reaction was a result of one part my NF personality, one part character identification, and one part the author’s talent with words.  Her weaving of the story and the emotions of the characters was masterful.

Don’t think it happens to you?

Think of the last news article or controversial Facebook status you read.  How did those innocuous little bunches of letters make you feel?  Upset?  Happy?  Pissed off?  Did you passionately deny, support, defend the ideas?

Or just shrug and read the next headline?

So remember the next time you read something:  what does the x-ray of those words you have said or heard reveal about your heart?

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

Okay, maybe this post is a stretch for the Letter X.  “But you gotta admit, that’s sexier.”*