I'd like to share with you a passage from a favorite book of mine called A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L'Engle. Here she shares her perspective on the role of words in our life.

The simplest word is almost always the right word. I am convinced that Beatrix Potter used 'soporific' because it was, it really and truly was, the only right word for lettuce at that moment. One of my favorite authors, Anon, wrote, centuries ago:

The written word
Should be clean as bone,
Clear as light,
Firm as stone.
Two words are not
As good as one.

I should pay more attention to those lines than I do. The writer who listens to them will do his own limiting, but it will come from inside, it will come from a creative response and not from an arbitrary restriction, which is the structure that imprisons instead of the structure that liberates.

The more limited our language is, the more limited we are; the more limited the literature we give to our children, the more limited their capacity to respond, and therefore, in their turn, to create. The more our vocabulary is controlled, the less we will be able to think for ourselves. We do think in words, and the fewer words we know, the more restricted our thoughts. As our vocabulary expands, so does our power to think. Try to comprehend an abstract idea without words: we may be able to imagine a turkey dinner. But try something more complicated; try to ask questions, to look for meaning: without words we don't get very far. If we limit and distort language, we limit and distort personality.

Deal bountifully with your servant,
that I may live and keep your word. Psalm 119:17

Labels: everyday art, Word