The price of your words

There was a myth about a group of villagers who lived in the Solomon Islands. It was said that whenever they needed to cut down a tree that was simply too large to be destroyed by axes, they would gather special woodsmen who would scream at it and curse it for a period of thirty days. Then, at the end of those thirty days, as if its life force was sucked out of its very branches, the tree would wither and die. This method apparently never failed to be successful.

We have learned to give our thoughts and emotions a life through the words we use. We are the only living things that can use words to communicate. Strangely enough, words are the most difficult way in which to communicate. This is simply because words have the bizarre power that ensures that whenever you say something, you can never truly trust that the words alone could carry your thoughts. Context, tone and a plethora of other factors affect that gap between what you say and what you convey.