‘How I Became A Word Thief’: A Script From My TED Talk
“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.” — Diane Setterfield
Imagine for a moment that you have a choice before you: you can either spend the next six minutes listening to me speak, or you can receive a solid, gleaming gold bar as your reward.
It’s a choice that, for most, would seem quite obvious.
But, what if I were to tell you that I possess something far more valuable than gold, something that might just transcend the worth of any precious metal?
My talk today revolves around the extraordinary power of words and the ways in which this power can either fortify or immobilize us — depending on how we choose to wield it.
Language is a tool that has existed since the dawn of time.
Words are like master keys that allow you to get into other people’s heads and unlock specific emotions in them.
It is arguably mankind’s greatest invention, one that separates us from the rest of the species that inhabit this planet.
Consider the orcinus orca, more commonly known as the killer whale — a species often hailed as one of the Earth’s most intricate species.
Their claim to this title lies in their remarkable ability to craft a distinct and thoroughly unparalleled way of communicating — a language woven from a symphony of clicks, whistles, and even bubble blowing.
But… I’m no biologist. What I am, however, is a person who collects words the way some people would collect rocks or other fine things.
Whenever I come across something particularly interesting, I squirrel it away in a corner of my brain so that I can come back and puzzle over it later.
This obsession of mine stems from the compulsive desire to be understood, on a much deeper level. I mean, at the end of the day, isn’t that what we all want, really? Isn’t effective communication the linchpin to survival?
Here, let me give you an example.
Last summer I finished reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusack. As I snapped the book shut, an unusual blend of despair and joy surged within me like a tsunami, rattling my ribcage and leaving my insides in disarray.
For a brief moment it felt as though my entire world had shifted slightly off balance, so deeply invested was I in that book.
I desperately wanted to tell a friend, to somehow convey my conflicting emotions so that perhaps I could be understood.
But when the moment came, all that escaped my lips was a feeble, ‘I wish this book had never ended’ which was a half truth.
Because I was so overwhelmed with emotion, my words had let me down.
And that betrayal stung like no other.
Words had always been my shield, and without them, I found myself utterly defenseless.
When a feeling is inexpressible, when we have trouble describing it to people, it feels twice as deep and twice as painful– so when you have a word, what you have essentially is a way to untangle those twisty knotted vines, to get to the core of what you’re feeling and share it with someone else.
There’s even psychology to back this up where if you put a word to a feeling — that can help neutralise it and give you a sense of control.
The right word connects the brain and the heart.
Or at least, that’s what I believed.
That is until I came across a book called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig that shifted the way I look at words forever.
This man took seven years to compile a book — which is now, my holy grail — to put names to emotions that we all feel but lack the words to express.
“It’s a calming thing, to learn there’s a word for something you’ve felt all your life but didn’t know was shared by anyone else. It’s even oddly empowering – to be reminded you’re not crazy. You’re just an ordinary human trying to make your way through a bizarre set of circumstances.” — John Koenig
For instance, he penned the word anaphasia which is the fear that society is breaking apart into factions that have nothing left in common with each other– each defending their own set of values, referring to their own cult figures, and speaking their own untranslatable language.
Amidst the ceaseless turmoil gripping our world, with nations locked in bitter disputes, one cannot help but wonder: is there a term more fitting than this to describe our times?
Then there’s echthesia, referring to a state of bewilderment when your internal sense of time doesn’t seem to match that of the calender—
– a sense that something just occurred though it supposedly transpired seven years ago, or that you’ve managed to accumulate a decade’s worth of memories in a mere year and a half.
This word, to me, is now irrevocably linked with the era of lockdown.
But here’s the true crux of the matter: If I hadn’t explained to you what the words echthesia or anaphasia meant in the first place, would you have been able to discern their meaning or would you have just looked at me as if I were crazy?
Probably the latter, which got me thinking… Maybe it was time for me to pull my head out of the dictionary and look at the bigger picture.
Koenig suggests that words are just ‘airy abstractions’ , fleeting patterns in the air, no more tangible than the constellations in the night sky. According to him that’s all they are:
‘A constellation of thoughts and ideas that our ancestors traced into memorable shapes.’
Unlike gold bars they have no intrinsic value. Then why do we give them so much importance?
You stub your toe on the coffee table and immediately define your emotion as anger, even though in reality you’re just hurt.
I felt a hopeless despair after reading the book thief, but I realized I only felt that way because I didn’t have the words to express my joy.
So in the end, maybe this gap in the language we experience is a blessing as well as a curse.
It is only because of this gap that I have spent days obsessing over a single word trying to figure out whether it defines me accurately, not realizing that it’s supposed to be the other way around.
Isn’t it frightening how easy it is to give words more weight than they deserve?
The gap allows me to reflect internally, and it is through this journey of trying to give word to my feelings that allowed me time to really feel my emotions and as a result helped me get better in touch with them.
The power all along, was not in the words but in myself. It is we that must wield the power to write our own narratives.
‘It’s okay to turn to words every now and then for a feeling of familiarity, but do this with caution. Don’t get too familiar. Don’t get so fixated on the constellations that you’re unable to see the stars. Words can mean whatever you want them to be, your entire life can be fleeting, but you can make a summer afternoon playing board games with your family last for an eternity.’
Thank you.
