Letters and Words

            What are these things? These letters. Shapes. Symbols. Alone, they are meaningless. Nothing more than ink on paper. Paint on a wall. The temporary manifestation of light upon a screen.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

            See? Nothing. Just symbols. Each one is assigned a meaningless sound. We put them in order so we can learn and memorize them. So we can teach them and pass them on. We call it the alphabet because we have to call it something.

            Then we multiply them and mix them up. We lay them down beside each other and their combined sounds take on meaning. They form words. Those words, made up of odd symbols and sounds, mean something to us. They have power. The power to put images and thoughts in our head.

            Tree.

            Monkey.

            Pink rhinoceros.

            We string many of these words together, giving them more meaning. A sentence. We put together some sentences to make a paragraph, with even greater meaning. The more we add, the greater the meaning. With enough paragraphs, you have a book.

            Books contain much meaning.

            The same can be said of the rest of the world. One atom is meaningless. The more atoms that get added, the more meaning they have. They could become a tree. Ink on a page. A person.

            Why, then, do so many people try to tackle the world alone? Why, when grouping together can help us find meaning, is so much effort put into defining others as different and driving us apart?

            Together we could find so much meaning.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.