One word that represents the vocabulary of mankind!  Talk about having a lot to live up too.  Whew.

We have all been granted “freedom” of speech by a government no one really knows, likes or understands.  Nevertheless, we can thank them for this gift.  However, when we look at interaction with those of our friends, frienemies, family and those who just cross our paths, it does make you wonder what it has become.

We all want to know “what” someone said, but we don’t always take ownership or responsibility for what we say.  It is also amazing how little we realize the weight our words have on someone.  Example of a movie scene, the dying character has last rights and is “saved” in this life from all actions and pain they have inflicted on others, just because a priest offers biblical words.  When a man and woman stand in marriage the vows they speak bond them for a lifetime if they are lucky or haunt them forever in a divorce of irreconcilable differences i.e. words.

A highlight is baby’s “first” words; mine was dirt so I have to figure out the connection to my life with that one.  Listening to gossip with an “OMG have you heard” to a “shut up! Don’t tell me” again words.   Some words, like those in the last days of life are like gold nuggets carried close in a well worn pouch.  Each word holding an emotion, experience and memory, becoming more valuable than any biblical ones, for the person who has a soul preparing to depart the earthly shell of a body it has been stored in.

In a world that has taken the E train across the informational highway with warp speed Spock could not have even envisioned, we have become nothing but electronic words, in a world of warm blooded emotional beings.  There is a word for this and it isn’t progress.

Even the publishing industry that provided a written word bound in leather or torn paperback has now morphed from the saving coffin floating away from Moby Dick and Go Dog Go in a party hat, into a moment away delivery to an E-book reader that can hold 5,000 books.  Somewhere in a shoebox is a library card missing a decimal system taped to a book spine.

As a memory hoarder I have cards, pictures, recordings and journals linking me to the people behind their words. I consider them sacred souvenirs of my life and not piles of “why are you saving this again?’  Cursive writing is no longer taught in school, a tragedy as I trace over the capital ‘L’ I always sign and the bold thick signature my father always put to paper.  I see him in that script, I remember the moment and oddly enough I remember my father being known for being “A Man of His Word.”  That phrase doesn’t translate to well with EBay, Paypal, E-Trades and TMZ does it?

Anyone can give a speech or deliver the news, but no one really communicates anymore.  The joy of getting a card or note and calling or visiting to thank the sender is almost gone.  A whisper in the year of a child telling a secret, or a pot of tea, and a long visit with someone from your heart, just don’t have the meaning they once did.  However, with little effort in your own circle of friends I think a grass roots campaign could bring it back with very little effort.

And it could all start by word of mouth……