Too Much is being said

Beethoven’s Pastoral.
Have you heard Beethoven’s Pastoral? It is piece of quiet melody with a lot of power. It takes you back to the slower times a few centuries ago when the choices were limited and so were the topics of conversation and the number of people you could talk to. People did not read and write and the conversation was limited to one’s very personal surroundings such as hunting, dogs, local skirmishes and gossips, the weather and stories. Life was slow paced and keeping one’s counsel was more the norm. Silence was known and appreciated. One can still get this experience if one can find a quiet spot in the lap of nature where mechanical advancements of the last 200 years have not made an appearance.
In contrast we are today inundated with the incessant noise and the continuous bandying of words. Everybody has so much to say. Everybody knows so much and understands so little; this is the crux. We are surrounded by second-hand information and wisdom and we are actively perpetuating it as our own. The Media is serving us wisdom on a platter and there is always something to talk about. We quote great Gurus and sound erudite. It is all so superficial. It is the germ which goes into making of intellectual snobs. These are intelligent people, good with words and supremely nubile in connecting individual words to other related words in a continuous stream of sentences which is unending. It is also a word-wall which hides the real person. It is also a dead give-away to lack of depth; we see this in others and yet do not believe for a moment that we ourselves could be afflicted.
I have noticed two trends. One how everyone talks assuming that the other is a total ignoramus, two how speedily faults are found in the statements of others; as if superciliousness is in fashion.
We are so busy pouncing on words, we fail to give ourselves time to go behind the meaning of the whole sentence or paragraph.Of course, taken in isolation, any meaning can be attributed to any statement. The mind is playing with the words and not using them for what they are: vehicles to pass on the images from one mind to another. The result is a lot of conversation yet little is said. I have a firm belief, things should be said when there is a live "QUESTION" necessating or/and demanding an answer!Otherwise there is a lot of noise made, many words written which are not paid attention to and soon forgotten. I think we humans need to learn to conserve our energies in this domain.Of course there is this need to expand the mind and this can be done only by extensive reading and listening to others. To begin all this info and knowledge is certainly necessary.The importance cannot be estimated in words and figures. All begins here. But some people take this collecting of info as the wisdom itself and lose their way.So we need to be on our guard otherwise we shall be counting the trees and miss the forest.
Another aspect of our lives is the extent of exposure an individual gets. What kind of lives do people live on the average? A very small world indeed! It is my experience that very few people are able to actually connect with most of the words and ideas represented. For most it will be a lot of beautiful sounding theories with little or no connectivity with their personal thoughts and experiences. At best it can be an intellectual exercise; what can be called “poetic gymnastics”.Your experiences when put into words cannot wholly transfer the whole images and pictures that are stamped in your memory; therefore even though you may be using commonly understood words, the end result is not always evident. You may even see the eyes going blank.
Which brings me to another pet peeve; too much is being told! There is a limit to how much can be safely told and said. Wisdom and knowledge is gathered in stages. Every piece of info is now available in books and on the internet. I suppose everyone wants to be heard and feels that he has much to say. But there is wisdom also in considering if, the recipient is ready; this is a kind of knowledge which I feel should not be given out to all and sundry. They would not know its value. Rather if misunderstood and the chances are very high, they might even harm themselves.
My belief is firm in the harm the unbridled use of the spoken and written word is causing. Take for instance Depression. Every morning morbid pieces of heart churning news is published in the dailies and often repeated on the TV with lurid pictures. In general it has a depressive effect. It also creates unknown fears; then why do we continue with it? And worse, we make it available 24 hrs, day in and day out. How will the knowledge that a plane went down in Russia, Britney is having baby or that a politician’s son has taken an overdose of cocaine help me understand the world and myself better and improve my life and sort?
Recently I had a conversation with someone who was sad and thinking of suicide. She was maintaining her level of sadness by harboring and focusing on her morbid thoughts. Instead of trying to engage the mind elsewhere she was feeding her mind by delving on the subject in everyway she could. One of this was by listening to songs that would revive the sad moments. This is what I had to say to her: Because you are sensitive to "words", not to listen to anything with words in it. Specially love songs and such, as these would tend to revive dormant memories and sadness/nostalgia. Don’t listen even to instrumental versions of the songs that bring words to your mind.Stick to pure music and you will see this will bring a change.Words are there to help us see and go beyond our own limitations but every time we go out to disseminate info, I think we should also consider this question “Is it useful, Is there a need for it here, because the problem is in showing to others what they are not trained or ready to see?