Compelling Words

Read an interesting post on suzie's comedic blog about the N-Word. I picked it up on Digg. It got my interest because I happen to be Black myself and I must confess that the word may be part of a subconscious compulsion that draws me in as it does others. There were over seventy comments to that article that the moderator allowed! After reading the post I didn't think it was particularly useful. It didn't solve anything. The word is still the word.

The Bible in John describes the word as God. Maybe that is why we become so obsessed with them. But I don't see any intrinsic power in words at all. The only power to be derived from words is the power we give them. We are the power. Name-calling in particular is demonstrative. The particular word criticized has a history of pejorative connotations. So I guess the history of a word has a lot to do with how people perceive them. If I called you a name the has no traditional connotation how would you receive or interpret that word. For instance, if I called you a "giraffe", how would you receive that and interpret. My guess is that you would not receive it at all refering to you. You would most probably end up ignoring it. But, if the media, say through entertainment, had prepped you to believe that there was some kind of embarrassing, humiliating, shameful, or negative connotation associated with being called a "giraffe", getting called a "giraffe" would might indeed offend you.

This is the key to the whole dilemma. Your life is your own and yours alone. It is for you to define for yourself. You can not project something that does not exist within you to project out. Whatever you project is still yours. It does not affect anybody else. If it happens to offend someone else you just harmonized with some one on your same wavelength. What you project out only hurts you. If you concentrate on experiencing your life, you couldn't be concerned about defining others as you would be busy defining yourself. That is what is between you and The Creator.