I love words. Love the simple-but-complicated way they move a thought from one person’s head to another, the way a single word can have a dozen shades of meaning or change its meaning entirely. I love the fact that it’s possible to become friends with someone when your only contact is letters typed on a screen. I love stories, the way perfectly chosen words can make you care deeply aobut people who never existed at all. I love the way different languages prioritize different things: in Hebrew everything is gendered, even numbers; in Finnish, almost nothing is gendered; and in Cherokee, you can conjugate a verb differently depending on whether you’re describing something you observed or something you just heard about. I love the Purple Priestess’s diaries on the origins and meanings of words. And I love the Hindu Goddess of words, Sarasvati.
Words create. A law is just words on paper, butit has power over our lives. In my work, I see words on paper give children a new set of parents. It's common for spiritual traditions to assign mystical powers to words.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God. – John 1:1
Jewish tradition forbids speaking or writing the name of G-d, and some find hidden meanings in each letter. Both prayer and magic depend on the right words (though of course the words are only the beginning). Names are particularly important. One story tells how the Goddess Isis gained power over Ra, the King of heaven, by tricking him into revealing his secret name. An identical story is told of Lilith and G-d.
Sarasvati is the bestower of art, science, and all forms of learning. She is also a river Goddess, and her river is often used as a metaphor for eloquence and the flow of speech. She loves both the spoken and written word. She gives the power to choose the right words – and, on rare occasions, the wrong ones.
In some Hindu traditions, anyone can practice extreme acts of austerity in order to ask an important favor from the deities. Even a wicked person will have the wish granted, if they have practiced a severe enough regimen of self-denial. So it was with the demon Kumbhakarna. He first spent years practicing sleep deprivation, self-starvation, and other mortifications of the flesh. He then approached Brahma, the Creator, asking for a boon.
Brahma was no fool. He was well aware that prior to his starvation regimen, Kumbhakarna had devoured a number of Hindu sages and other humans, as well a several of the celestial nymphs. Any gift that Brahma gave him would only make him more powerful and dangerous. But the rules for divine gifts were the same for everyone, and Brahma was loath to refuse.
Brahma’s wife Sarasvati came to the rescue with her power over speech. Kumhakarna meant to say, "Nirdevata," meaning, "Let there be no deities." But Sarasvati made his tongue slip, and he said, "Nidratva," meaning, "Let me sleep."
"It shall be as you say," Brahma pronounced. "You shall sleep from now on, waking only for a single day every six months."
Kumbhakarna murmured, "That’s funny...I meant to say...zzzzzz."
Words are so powerful that they become a stand-in for creating reality. Conservatives these days will go to absurd lengths to avoid the use of words like torture. Instead they substitute verbal anesthetics like "harsh questioning" or "enhanced interrogation." There is an almost magical belief that if you don’t name it, then it isn’t real. Where's Orwell when you need him?
Even with all my reverence for words, it was jarring to read the opening of An Ordinary Man , a memoir by Paul Rusesabagina , the hotel manager whose story was told in Hotel Rwanda . He describes the beginning of the genocidal madness in his country, how he caught sight of a neighbor – someone he’s known and liked – now holding a machete dripping with another neighbor’s blood.
"What had caused this to happen? Very simple: words."
He goes on to describe how generations of Hutus were told that they were stupid, ugly, and in all ways less deserving than the Tutsis. After the Hutus took power they answered with words of their own, calling the Tutsis evil and inferior; the most popular epithet was "cockroaches." The nation’s one major radio station was gradually filled with voices attacking Tutsis, first only with insults, then with rising exhortations to violence. And as the violence tore the country apart, the world community put most of its energy into carefully avoiding the word genocide.
All of these come down to a failure of words. And that is what I want to tell you: words are the most effective weapons of death in man’s arsenal. But they can also be powerful tools of life. They may be the only ones.
Today I am convinced that the only thing that saved those 1,268 people in my hotel was words. Not the liquor, not money, not the UN. Just ordinary words directed against the darkness.
I think about the hate-filled voices in my own country, that seem to be multiplying rapidly since a dark-skinned man had the temerity to get elected president. These voices have always been here, yet something has changed. Openly calling for the overthrow of government is shrugged off. A Governor who talks of secession is treated as if this were not an insane thing to say. "Jokes" about killing liberals have become standard filler on the far right, like Ann Coulter’s allegedly humorous comment about blowing up the New York Times building, or Bill O’Reilly’s babbling about destroying San Francisco. Glenn Beck appears to be serious while ranting about FEMA camps and claiming "They are coming for you."
I have heard it suggested that such words should be ignored, that our attention only inflates their importance. And I understand the argument, that some (cough Coulter cough) are only in it for the attention. But when words become weapons, silence is not enough.
We need to reclaim words that have been stolen. Wishing death on fellow Americans is not patriotism. Spying without warrants and arresting without charge is not freedom. Taking people’s marriage rights away is not defending marriage. Truthiness is not truth.
So I pour out words, writing to politicians, writing to newspapers while we still have them, writing to people who know me only as a name on a screen, speaking to the people around me, each word a drop of water trying to become Sarasvati’s river.