Sometimes I read back over the things I've written, both here on the blog and elsewhere in random files on my laptop, and I just start laughing. I start laughing because I sound like such a total knob, so pretentious and up myself - but the truth is that when inspiration strikes, that's what happens, because inspiration is talent. I know Zoe gets the urge to reach for her camera when she sees something that would make a fantastic photograph, in the same way that Lauren can, when she's acting, become a whole different person. I have no talent at either of those things, but their ability to claim inspiration shows that they do. Similarly, neither of them - or indeed any of my other friends - voluntarily spend a good chunk of every day musing over words and their grammatical meanings and usages and the way you can change what you're saying by changing their syntactical order or whether or not people are actually saying what they mean. Their faces don't light up when they notice an amusing arrangement of words, and they do not feel the complete outrage I do when I see a misplaced apostrophe. But that's why I'm doing linguistics at university and they're not. That's why we're friends; because we're different. We can share our passions and talents and soon enough we have pretty much everything we need to know covered.
Lauren's blog post the other day talked about definitions, and it got me thinking: who creates these definitions? Who gave Samuel Johnson and the other writers of dictionaries permission to classify words in this manner? If they created the definitions, how did they know how to define them in the first place? What if words could feel - would they resent this brusque categorization we thrust upon them? We do. We resent our categorization, our stereotypes - who's to say words aren't the same? Humans can't be defined by words... words are simple; humans are not. Right? But no - no. Humans are complex, yes, but so are words. All the different meanings they have and the way they can change whole entire meanings just by swapping themselves around (looking at child language acquisition, one of the first examples we learned for the two word stage was "Daddy kick", or indeed "kick Daddy" - is this merely an overexcited child with a desire to learn football, or do we have the next Hitler on our hands?). Words can inspire, enlighten, delight; they can teach, entertain and thrill. They can also destroy, crush, weaken... words are amazing, and how often do we stop to realize it? Possibly only when we visit a country where we don't have a grasp of the language and therefore can't take it for granted - some of my favourite words are in foreign languages, especially Danish - it's only then we realize that we don't just use words for conversations. We use them in shops; for directions; for warnings; for instructions; for having conversations with your best friend's parents when neither of you speak the same language (luckily the best friend in question speaks both); for telling freaks to back off (accents can also be hard to understand in this case and trust me, I speak from experience)... the list goes on and on. And if you're with someone who speaks the language it's so easy to just let them do all the talking... Cora's very familiar with that.
Seriously though. I'm not entirely sure how I got from talking about inspiration to boring you all with my love of language (again), but I hope I've made my point: words. Words can destroy or they can inspire - it's up to you how you use them but please, give them a chance to be what they're meant to be and say what they're meant to say. They'll thank you for it.
We all lose our inspiration every now and again, but if we didn't, we wouldn't be able to appreciate that rush that inevitably comes; that burst of enthusiasm which brings idea upon idea into our brain, usually before the last one has even fully disappeared, and lets us know that everything is going to be okay - that we are, as we were so sure of before our inspiration dissolved, talented. Special. Because we are, and easy though it is to forget that in the midst of all the other talented and special people we meet throughout our daily lives, try to remember how special you - yes, YOU - are.
To use a quote I once heard which has always stuck with me: to the world you may be one person, but to one person you are the world.
Merry Christmas.
Molly x
