Twice in my life, I have been unable to speak. When I was born, and when I died. When I was born, it was my fault: a life unlived, potential yet unknown. When I died, it was your fault: a feeling too strong for words, incapable of expressing my grief.
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I celebrated the first day of March by teaching my friends a delicious strawberry pie recipe.
ReplyDelete(It's a holiday here, actually: second campaign against their Japanese overlords.)
Funny, I would have written the blame opposite-- unable to speak at birth through no fault of my own, etc.
Although I think you could classify both as somehow connected to feelings too strong for words.
But the good news is: blame is no one's but God to lay. Blame yourself all you want, but it won't accomplish anything.
ReplyDeleteThat is entirely true.
ReplyDeleteDid you know that the English language is more set up to lay blame than some other languages are? Some scientists studied that in something I read a long time ago. They showed people breaking things and asked people to describe what happened in their native language and in English.
People who used English instead of, say, Spanish, blamed the person for breaking it and described the event in a more accusatory way. They even described the person in more negative terms.
Anyway.
I just thought it was interesting.
English is also a relatively precise language for some uses, and a quite inventive language for all others. So perhaps it is that Spanish doesn't care to have a construction for lasting blame.
ReplyDeleteThat is true; I haven't studied many languages extensively, but from what I've learned of Spanish, Korean, and Swahili, I've gathered that English is more disposed than most to want to determine cause and effect, to use active rather than passive constructions, and to focus on the individual and that individual's actions.
ReplyDeleteBut that could just be the English-language literature I read.
In Australia, there is an aboriginal language that has no relative directions. Everything is east/west/north/south, and as such the natives have impeccable sense of direction.
ReplyDeleteI WAS GOING TO REFERENCE THAT VERY TRIBE BUT THEN DECIDED AGAINST IT, AND YOUR REFERENCE OF IT MAKES ME smile.
ReplyDeleteWHAT A GLOROIUS HAPPENSTANCE
ReplyDelete