If you ever doubt the power of language, listen more closely. Witness the magic the first time someone whispers “i love you.” Watch a woman put on head phones, close her eyes, and have her life changed by a lyric. See a bad moment flipped upside down by a well timed joke. Words propel us, empower us, make us human and more than human. We constantly struggle to say what we mean and mean what we say. To “wrestle with words and meanings.” that’s what t.s. eliot calls it. But as we whisper and shout, stutter and spin, we create order out of the chaos around us. We are built of words, and we live by them, too.