334. language and us

language and us The Word By Henry H. Walker In the Beginning there was the Word, In the End we can lose the Word, and we can be lost inside our consciousness, as I watch my grandchildren  come into themselves and learn to use language, I am struck with how language uses them, also, how the inchoate thought finds definition by the choices language imposes, no longer do I see the infant as having the thought  and then finding the words to express it, rather I see the infant as driven  by impulse and the need to understand and then the language  orders the thoughts and feelings into coherence, words not just the tool the wielder chooses  to use to express what’s already there, but the word somehow a partner in shaping thought and feeling, I understand that J.R.R. Tolkien first imagined the Elvin language into existence, and out of that imagining Middle Earth,  The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion, were imagined, were created into existence, how powerful the Word: much of who we are is shaped by our language.