Dear Editor:
Loose use of language and words subtly undermines the legitimate ability of humans to clear communication. For instance, we do not really speak English. We speak American. How any foreigner ever gains command of our use of language and claims to have learned English astounds me. We allow one word to mean a dozen different things. Perhaps people from other countries are more intelligent. Perhaps they realize they are not know-it-alls and unlike us, they have not lost the ability to listen. This condition enlightens me to the meaning of the true Americans belief that “white man speak with forked tongue.”
I see plenty of evidence that the American Indians had great insight concerning what might very well be an innate flaw in our characters. It might also stem from the fact that democracy tends to encourage people to skirt around problems, solve most problems with bandaids, while searching for a scapegoat to blame and pass the problem to the next generation. Very little gets done of any benevolent value. All the efforts have been channeled to monetary value. When everyone is allowed to be right, through perversion of the constitution, then actually nobody is right. Somebody has to be wrong! (I claim some knowledge of simple arithmetic.)
I will attempt to apply the above logic to the particular word “love.” people say they love almost everything that the label “beauty” has been attached to. The word “like” is actually more accurate. Beauty everyone accepts is in the eyes of the beholder. In that case we get the mistaken idea that we chose to love. That’s why some misguided fool in Brooklyn can try to pass off a painting, flung with dung, in a public museum. He loves his creation and wants the whole world to enjoy it. He is right in an atmosphere where everyone is entitled to his own opinion and nobody can be wrong. Maybe I’m stupider than I realize, but I can make no sense of such license, least of all, any enjoyment. There is no love there because he selected that object to love.
Real love hits us through no choice or decision of ours. In fact sometimes loving can be very painful and any attempt to stem or deny it will do us more physical and psychological damage than we realize. A mother whose child commits a heinous act, still loves it, she has no choice. A home owner in the Wayne area of NJ that gets constantly destroyed by flood, rebuilds even when a reasonable person would choose to relocate. He has no choice, he has fallen in love with that location. Socrates loved discourse to a fault and chose to end his life because his love of disseminating knowledge was beyond his ability to endure life without it. You can imagine more examples better than I. I told you I don’t possess a photographic mind.
This is only one word that displays our confusion and mediocrity about the uses of the American language. No wonder so much misunderstanding is convincing us this is a tough world to live in. It really isn’t. Improve your understanding and you will laugh at almost everything.
Angelo Nanfro