Words can cut us from greater "convocation of love"

Words are peculiar things. They can be sweet and uplifting. They can be courageous and inspiring. Words can transport us to faraway lands and lofty ideals. Yet, their powers can also be used to rend, tear, stab, and destroy. They can be used to convey ire, scorn, and contempt with a simple turn of phrase or the inclusion, or omission, of a single one.

Sometimes, words are uttered, or written, in such a way as the owner attempts to appear witty and charmingly wry in their issue. The sneer in text, the burn in idiom, all can be wielded like clubs and blades against an enemy. How singularly poignant they can be when released in a flow of heat and hurt is unimaginable to those who may not have experienced such an attack. Thick skin is indeed required when slanderous gangs of syllables roam the virtual streets of the internet like children denied their candies. Or perhaps the better allegory would be adults denied their grapes, like the fox in Aesop's tale.

 

A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?
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A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain? Khalil Gibran
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/inhabit.html

A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain? Khalil Gibran
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/inhabit.html

You see, there is something special about humanity. We have the ability to see and speak the truth as well as choose not to see and to speak what we wish to be true - yet may be false. That which we no longer love we will find faults within it, and these we magnify to illusions that give strange whispering to our minds.

We have a special ability within our selves that allows us to create entire narratives. We see the grapes of our desires, and not being able to access them in the manner we wish, we create in our minds the affirmation that they are sour, that they are untrustworthy and in all manner unsavory. We may even go so far as to point at a grape and scream out at it, accusing it of being bitter or the choicest among the most rotten. We hold in ourselves the ultimate power of illusion-come-delusion at will.

"Man is the truth and falsehood strangely mixed"

These voices in our heads then can, if unchecked, lead to scattered attacks on people and places meant to wound that which we no longer call our own. Whether through self-imposed exile or being cast out, the pain of being separated from that ideal vision that we held of this cherished body often leads humans to slash at the former object of their affections. Left unchecked, it can devolve into  slander against peaceful peoples who have offered no public quarrel. We draw out our sling and cast our rocks, yet our hands remain in plain sight. The horror of those who watch the spectacle goes unnoticed in our zeal to draw that first blood.

We begin to see enemies and attacks in the face of the postman, the police officer, the teacher, or the television. We write diatribes against folks and try to bring them down. We attack the widow in her grief in our bitter drive, with no regard to the crushing of her grief's flowers as we grind them under the cart of our complaints. Our thirst sated, we then sit back like a swollen toad on a stone, puffed up in the importance of nothing, surrounded by stale water, and covered in the muck.

And the only one who cannot see the absurd tragedy of the figure we cut is ... us. 

Ultimately, this path leads to a madness of spirit and meanness of character that further distances everyone away from us. It leads to furtive looks and the shaking of heads as people learn to avoid the angry, the unlucky, the liar, the slanderer, or the insane. They begin to see that our faces show lines of contempt's frowns instead of the laugh lines of loving spirit. Our good works turn to ashes and our name is not spoken. The melody of welcome begin to fade away and, if we are not careful. Only the sound of silence begins to greet us at public gatherings, and the bodies of our peers begin to face away from us in conversation, as if we carry a contagion of discontent.

Far better to use our words to uplift and spread our own light into the world. So much is gained by not telling ourselves, and others, our lies. The refrain of envy and contempt that continuously sings through our souls when we stoop to attack other people changes to an aria of enlightenment in the blink of an eye when we meet with others in good fellowship. Only goodness, and joy, and blessings could await the higher part of us if we seek not to bring about destruction.

Only then, can we join the happy few, the light bringers, in the greater "convocation of love".