How is being hit by a hard word
different from being hit by
a brick or a bat?
To burn, the spark of a hard word
must find some kindling inside
the recipient, elsewise it can't ignite.
If someone points at me and screams:
"YOU ARE SUBPAR AT ALGEBRA!"
I remain unwounded.
[I'd like to say that it doesn't burn
simply because it's true,
but the truth or falsity of hard words
is -- perhaps sadly -- not a major
ignition factor.
The kindling is a thing that sits inside one --
something that makes one care,
probably a complex mélange of factors.
The truth of hard words?
That is an outside factor.]
Even if I were to discover that,
to the person who issued the insult,
there is no greater disparagement
than to cast aspersions upon a
person's middle school-level
mathematics competency,
I would remain unwounded.
If I were to feel any sort of way
about uncovering that knowledge,
it would be to feel sort of bad
for the person who issued the taunt.
Now, how to burnproof one's soul,
that is the question?
There was a psychiatrist named Jung
who thought the Unconscious was far-flung --
like Sandman's "The Dreaming"
that you've seen on streaming:
farfetched and fictional -- with heroes, unsung.
There once was a psychiatrist named Freud
who thought all were obsessed with filling a void...
a void in the pants!
Though some looked askance,
and those whose cigars weren't cigars were annoyed.
There was a soft-spoken jeweler from Estonia
who often worked in cubic zirconia.
He'd never tell a lie,
but came across quite shy,
Some thought they'd got the best deal in Estonia.
Scarecrow, n. - that which exists
solely to evoke fear.
There are so many scarecrows:
global - the end of the world
as we know it.
societal - the end of the tribe
as we know it.
individual - scarecrows of the soul.
Scarecrows lead us into the worst
versions of ourselves:
The one who's stressed, and mean
because of it.
The one who imagines conspiracy
around every corner.
The one who sees threat in every
change & in every difference.
The one who wants an orderly world
of people just like themselves -
familiar, cozy, and lacking surprises.
Scarecrows even march us off to war,
and war should be the scariest state
imaginable --
death doled out on a random basis.
War should be the scariest, but terrible certainties
spur less fear than any old uncertainty.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 