Discrimination in the Use of Words
Yesterday evening we were intensely discussing a family project, going into different details, when my eldest son said: “You can’t sell the skin of a bear which isn’t yet shot.” (No, we weren’t talking about Bruno the Bear who just was shot in Bavaria and against the killing of it Italy wants to go to an EU-court in Brussels, as the news reported yesterday…) It seemed me to be in a symbolic sense a statement about how to deal with speech, not only in regard to the family project – about which I won’t speak 😉
When you speak or write about something, there is often this question of what to say when and how. It is a subject I am very much confronted with – not only when writing in the blog, but also at the office, where I’m responsible for the electronic communication, or in different volunteer works in the context of our group work.
It is of utmost importance to discriminate what and how something can be said and with which words. I very often come into contact with different forms of misunderstanding arising out of what was said, what was heard and what was the resultant. Most conflicts arise out of the dealing with speech, with the word.
In India the word is even considered as a deity, Saraswathi, the goddess of wisdom, and there is the Sanskrit saying, “Satyam bruyat, priyam bruyat” – speak the truth, speak the truth softly. Mastering the right use of the word is indeed a great skill of wisdom.
