Words are Beautiful

These days I spend a great deal of my life wrestling with words, trying my best to find the right combination of them to paint emotional pictures inside a readers mind. I love words, or more accurately, I love the beauty I find in arranging words to convey ideas.

But what exactly are words?

Words are labels, a sound or collection of letters that point to something real, often something tangible, something that can be touched, felt, experienced. They reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp. But the words themselves are nothing more than a signpost, a label. They are a creation of the human mind.

The English language consists of five basic sounds produced by the vocal cords: the vowels a, e, i, o, u. The other sounds are consonants produced by air pressure: s,f,g, and so forth.

A few words by themselves hold great meaning within the human mind; words like freedom, liberty, justice, beauty, love, God, etc.

But the true power of words comes when we strings them together to communicate with other humans, perhaps people not even born yet. They do not define who we are or what our purpose on earth could possibly be, but they do convey ideas, spark the imagination, and help guide us toward understanding those basic social questions.

Words are labels the human mind developed in order to better comprehend itself, and that, I think, is beautiful.