Language is Not Our Friend

I have a problematic relationship with words. They are--often the source--always an instrument of the worst of what we do to one another, and at the same time, our only means of finding our way out of the destructive maze they have created. It is so difficult to distinguish between their power to do us harm from their power to save us from ourselves. As though with fire--we could never quite remember or grasp the difference between using it to warm ourselves on winter afternoons and setting our bodies ablaze, and collectively--one might think there were a deep inclination or drive to favor the later over the former.