Words are the tools through which we express our thoughts. As a house is built by using bricks and mortar and a piece of furniture is manufactured by assembling wooden boards, thus are words the items that constitute the physical expression of our ideas.
In building a house or a shelf, would you use more bricks or boards than necessary? Certainly not. If you did, the result would be less than perfect. You must use only what is needed. Also nature does not “waste” anything. So … why do humans do?
In past articles we have talked about several kinds of “waste” such as money, water, different natural resources. I believe it is now worth it pondering a bit about a new fashion that seems to have become an epidemic: Logorrhea. “Logorrhea” is a word that not everybody knows. It sounds like a disease but it is not. It derives from the old Greek language (“logos” = word and “reo” = flow) and it is defined as excessive talkativeness. Nowadays it is one of the main features of human relationships. Nowadays, people simply talk too much. I had the opportunity to reflect upon this during a recent meeting where the topic under examination would have needed about 15 minutes to be sorted out. But it took two hours! I find this type of situation to a certain extent amusing, but also a little sad! What a waste of breath, what a waste of time, what a waste of energy!
Whenever people talk, they do not limit themselves to just saying what they want to say. They have to go on explaining, repeating, going back to the beginning, recalling non-relevant facts etc. Why? Is it for the sake of talking? Is there something else, a hidden factor behind the façade? I keep wondering why people do not believe that it would be enough for them to just speak up their minds in order to be listened to, understood and taken into consideration. Are they insecure? Don’t they trust their abilities to convey their ideas in a proper concise way? Are their interlocutors easily distracted because they are busy thinking about the answers they are going to give?
In any case, this explains the enormous success obtained by the new communication devices such as mobile phones. Very rarely do you see an individual who is not speaking on his mobile while walking in the street, driving his car, seemingly listening to somebody else, eating a snack etc. It seems that the human race cannot keep quiet even for a very short time. The need to express oneself has reached the extremes. It seems that silence has become a synonym for failure, loneliness, rejection…
The natural consequence of this, I believe, is that words do not mean anything any more. Imagine a world where all the pebbles on the road are diamonds. Would you give them any value? Would they be considered precious? Certainly not. They would be something that could be easily wasted, thrown away with no regrets, kicked aside as worthless. The same is happening to words. When someone speaks, you don’t expect to hear a lot of significant, meaningful words because most of them actually mean nothing. Do I sound too harsh in my judgment, here? Maybe I am, and I apologize.
As a matter of fact I, myself, a.m. not a particularly taciturn person, I am not too reserved or uncommunicative. On the contrary, I love a good conversation. But I love a conversation where something is actually “said.” I don’t like when words — too many words — keep being uttered over and over, the same concepts repeated several times, digression after digression being made....
I feel I am becoming logorrheic myself, here, using more words than necessary to express my idea. Well, too bad. No one is immune, is one? The fad is too strong. Nevertheless, I try to refrain myself and stop right here!
n E-mail: [email protected]
Blog: recreateyourlifetoday.blogspot.com
