Wednesday, June 08, 2005

The power of words

I've made a startling realization. I'm kind of surprised by how long it has taken me to learn this. I always knew that writing and words were influential, but I never knew that MY words could do so much.

I love reading because it takes me to places I've never been. Not only remote locations on the globe, but distant ideas and concepts I've never considered before. My favorite authors are those who made me think...who challenged my generally accepted assumptions. The ones who not only made me laugh, cry, and feel ill, but also scare me by making me stop and re-evaluate things. Introspection inducers.

I figured they had the ability to elicit those responses because they were Writers. Writers with a capital W. People who were talented enough to have someone pay them to Write.

I was shocked to realize that even though I am not a Writer, I still have the ability to move people. Granted, my most recent brushes with this phenomenon have been less that desirable, they have a least shown me that even this lowly engineer has the ability to inspire, motivate, impel, evoke, stir, encourage, enthuse, arouse and induce genuine emotion in my readers.

Pretty heavy responsibility, no?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ya, I think your words yesterday really upset someone!

~ Jef

Anonymous said...

I would email you, but I don't know the address, and this will be unposted after you see it anyway. You didn't hurt my feelings at all. I actually thought that it was really funny, especially the following post about the power of your words. That part was pretty popular. I just wanted to point out that there are better places to air your ancient problems with people than on the internet. At no point did I say that I was hurt or angry. I could see being angry about it, but hurt? How could I expect to have the good opinion of someone I told to stop contacting me? Now I know that I should have been more diplomatic about it, but I accept the consequences of my actions. I meant everything that I said at the time because you honestly seemed to be interested in why I felt the way I did. I thought that you would just accept it and move on. If not being fake towards you and not saying things that I did not mean brands me as a negative person, that is fine. Most people do not share your opinion.

Maybe you can just try to remember the good times that we had as roommates instead of dwelling on how it ended. I should have been more sensitive to the fact that your behavior was driven by unhappiness instead of personal shortcomings.

As for angry anonymous, she was just letting some things off her chest. The post was just a trigger for some things that she had been wanting to say for a while. That is the only deleted post that was angry. As I said before, I do not hold any grudges or any ill will towards you. I just thought that the post was really weird and I guess that my sense of justice made me want to defend myself. I probably should have just ignored it. I wont post again. I hope that you have a great life.

Katie said...

Jill, the only reason I deleted anything was because you said you didn't want your name on the internet. I was trying to comply with your request.

That and your friend anonymous was really quite mean to my little sister. She is a lot thinner skinned than most people and I didn't think (with everything she is dealing with right now) she needed that kind of negativity thrown her way by someone who really doesn't know her at all.

We did have a lot of good times together, and I'm sorry that I didn't go into that here...it wasn't really on topic for that post.

I don't dwell on the past. I was simply trying to use MY past to describe my present.

Whether you want to believe it or not, you had a very big impact on my life. We lived together for three years...three of the most developing years of my life. You will always be part of my memories, as I will be of yours.

And by the way, I could gather just as many people from that period in my life to say that you were as rotten to me as your friends seem to think I was to you. So really...its all about perspective.

I really have no ill will to you. I was happy to hear that you were grading papers, meaning that you got a great job exactly in the field you wanted to. Congratulations Jill, I wish you all the best in your life.

Mrs. Architect said...

Woah, I totally missed something here. Let me clarify...when I said ditto to the anonomous, it was in praising of your writing and in recognizing the err of your ways.

I am a grudge holder and the only person it affects and harms is me. It is something I have recently made a conscience effort to change.