Confucius Says: Words Are the Voices of the Heart

I love words.
Good thing, I suppose, given my chosen and hard-fought-for occupation. Every time I sit down at a keyboard or have a pen poised over a blank sheet of paper, I feel overwhelmed with excitement, with possibility, with anticipation. With a few key strokes or swipes of a pen, you can find the right combination of words that can make someone LOVE you.
Conversely, you can break a heart, manipulate a mind or sever an allegiance…all with those same strokes or swipes. Think about that. Legends are immortalized because of words. Nations go to war over words. Couples are united in matrimony with words. Hearts and lives are shattered due to words. The power they wield is, in a word, awesome.


“Every time I come around the corner and see your car in the driveway I get sick to my stomach.”

I sat on the couch during yet another face-off with my mother when she let fly with that condemnation, effectively shattering any sense of comfort and belonging I may have been clinging to at the time. I was 17. I’m 48 now, and I can hear those words in my ear as clear as if they were uttered 10 minutes ago. I can’t say that it was those exact words that led to the eventual, unsurprising demise of my relationship with my mother, but I know it was certainly a huge chunk out of the already crumbling foundation. It stands, to this day, as one of the worst things anyone has ever said to me.

But, as I said, words are powerful. They have healing properties. Let me give you an alternate scenario.
 I was visiting a friend at what is now, TCNJ (then it was Trenton State College). My boyfriend of about a year had just broken up with me, quite unceremoniously, at a party the night before. I was feeling kind of blue, just sort of moping around the campus waiting for my friend’s class to end. While aimlessly wandering through the bookstore, I saw an old friend from high school, a guy who graduated a year ahead of me. We got to talking about life after high school and what my plans were and all of that idle small talk, when he looked me right in the eye and said, “Well Cass, the thing is, I hear you’re an excellent writer.”
What followed is not a Cinderella-like ending of fairy-tale romance (this is me we’re talking about and you know I hate that HS Musical type-shizz) between Matt Opacity (that was his name) and your Lang teacher.
We didn’t fall into each other’s arms and swear undying love—it wasn’t even a romantic moment.
He wasn’t trying out a brand-new pick-up line or even trying to soothe my bruised, dumped ego.
 It was a simple declaration that I am quite sure he would never even remember saying all these years later. But it’s impact on me was and is undeniable. Because of him, when I went back home, the first place I looked for a summer job was at a local newspaper called The Sandpaper. I landed a job as a stringer and at the tender age of 18, got my first ever piece of writing published. I even got paid for it! (It was an article on Tonkinese cats—don’t laugh!) Such is the power and the beauty of words.

So, that is the focus of this week’s blog question. I would like you to think about conversations you have had, arguments in which you’ve been embroiled, moments of bliss you have experienced. They all have one thing in common—WORDS.

The Yin: What is the worst thing anyone has ever said to you? Why do you think it was the worst thing? How did it make you feel?
And for the Yang (because there always is one): What was the best compliment you have ever received?
Who said it? Why do you think was it was the best compliment?

And finally, perhaps even MOST IMPORTANTLY, reflect on the fact that you highlighted these two particular comments. What do you think your choices of what was the best and worst thing anyone could say about/to you reveal about your personality? Much to think about, I know.

Last Guys Don't Finish Nice

I am a Robert Greene fan.

<crickets....>

...someone from afar cries out, "who?!?"

Well, then.  I guess this warrants further explanation.

The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War (I don't have the one he wrote with 50Cent) are all displayed prominently on my bookshelves, and the abuse each one of them has taken (bent pages, cracked spine, coffee spills/burns) would indicate that I've read them several times.
So, you guessed it--Robert Greene is an author.

Further, it comes as no surprise (well, to me I mean) that I am feeling a bit cynical this evening, and for that, I apologize; I think that my internal struggle with cynicism thanks to Greene may have influenced this week's intellectual proposition.
I shall let you be the judge, however, as to whether or not this was a good or a bad thing.

As many of you know, and if you didn't you do now, I am not that into "people." There are a select few I would ever willingly share time with, and more often than not, it shows.  The true friends (not the acquaintances--you have to have those or it's really hard to survive in the world as an adult) I have are friends I've had for quite a while--it's not always easy for me to make new ones and frankly, I don't often (ok, probably never) try.
But, don't misunderstand me--I know that this is not considered "normal" and I often wish that this aspect of my personality were not so deeply rooted .

Now, before I go any further, I feel it pertinent to actually define what I mean when I say "people."
So, here it goes, for lack of a more...academic definition:

PEOPLE: Individuals who are not kids (and yes, I realize the absurdity there since EVERYONE was at one time, in fact, a kid--I never said my appeals were to logos);  mostly over the age of 30 and under the age of 80 (for some reason, I find the elderly fascinating).

And there you have it--the definition of people in the world of Cassie Bunje.

This rather pessimistic and certainly asocial view of the human race is not something with which I was born, however, I feel that it began cultivating itself at a rather young age.
My childhood was not one to be looked back upon wistfully, and it didn't really get much better as I grew into young adulthood. This was due, almost entirely, to my interactions with and observations of, you guessed it--people.
In fact, until I became a teacher, I held out very little hope that I would ever be able to gaze upon the face of another human being without a hint of scorn, mistrust or distaste. True story.
Truth be told, and this is not me being dramatic at all--you could probably accurately say that teaching saved my soul. More on that later.

So, back to today (Sunday) and the churning maelstrom (look it up) of pessimism taking hold of me.
 In my reading earlier ( I was searching for a quote from Greene and forgot which book it was in--so I skimmed them all), I happened upon an interesting quote.

 I would like you to read and reflect on this quote, and tell me what you come up with in terms of whether or not you agree with what it says, and what it even means.
As always, qualify your answer with an anecdote of personal (or not-so-personal--whichever you prefer) experience to help illustrate the point you are making.
Here it is:

"Niceness is a decision. It is a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait."  --Rovert Greene

Have fun, my pumpkinsunshinefaceheads...

32 Names in Eskimo...So, Where Did We Go Wrong?

So, I've been thinking.  Sometimes that happens.  And when it does random topics whirl through my mind like mini cyclones, and sometimes in order to make sense of these thoughts I will write them down.  In the chaos and the tumult that is my mind, the ability to stop time by capturing those thoughts and depositing them on a page  is invaluable to me, and so, here we are.

The word "love" gets thrown around so much on a day-to-day basis, it's a wonder the letters haven't broken off and gotten lost forever. Or--have they? How often do you say you "love" something as silly as a pair of shoes or an ice cream flavor?

I have many favorite novels and one of those is The Secret Life of Bees.  It was remade into a movie with Queen Latifah.  Meh.  Anyway, set in the 60's at the start of the Civil Rights Movement, there is this matriarchal character in the story named August (think of the vocab word).  She is one of the so-named Calendar sisters in the book (the others are named May and June and there was once an April).  August takes in a 14-year old runaway, the main character in the story, and her name is Lily.  Like most storylines of the ilk, August is wise and weary and capable of great one-liners.  And this is one of them:
On page 140, August tells Lily,"We are so limited, you have to use the same word for loving Rosaleen as you do for loving Coke with peanuts. Isn't that a shame we don't have more ways to say it?"

The first time I read that line (Summer of 2005) I pondered it for hours afterward, desperate to find another word to replace the one that should remain sacred. And came up with....exactly nothing. It has never been far from my thoughts since then. 


So, your challenge for this week, poppets, is to dig deep inside yourself and think about what it is that you really love. In order to do that, I think it would be beneficial to start out with a working definition of what love is. How would you define it? What characteristics would be a good representation of it? And then, at long last, ask yourself..."What do I love?"
Does putting a classification on things you have previously said you "loved" change your perspective on what the meaning of love should be?

Oh, and for those of you wondering, "what's with the title of this blog, Bunj"--the Eskimo language has 32 words for denotative love.  32?!!!!!