A point of View by Paul Montesino

A Word to the Wise
A Point of View © 1996
By Paul V. Montesino, PhD, MBA, CSP.

Suppose you’ve followed my Point of View articles through the years. In that case, you’ll have noticed that, with few exceptions, the combination of my English and Spanish articles in Rumbo doesn’t take more than one page per issue, including any graphics or secondary material. That comes to an average maximum of nine hundred for an English article and nine hundred fifty for its Spanish translation. Language translation requires grammatical adjustments and considerations that increase the number of words.

I’m careful with those few exceptions. Trying to exceed that space would compete with other articles or advertising important to the editors, the newspaper’s economy, and primarily to you, the readers. We are here to help or enlighten you, not to bore you. I hope we succeed.

If you’ve followed the sacred biblical writings known through the ages, you may be familiar with a starting comment in The Book, the bible: “In the Beginning, it was The Word.”

Notice that it refers to “the Word,” not “the Words.” It was sufficient for our Creator to start with a seed that would grow to become a tree, not branches and twigs that would cloud the sky and deprive the tree of the sunlight it needs to succeed.

We’re not sure if prominent writers intentionally used a large number of words, but we know that they created big writings. The same is true when we talk about human communication and interaction. The recently completed national election cycle offered us opportunities exceeding what should have been or should’ve been enough to communicate our ideas and opinions, but we crossed that line as we often do.

There is no need to add insult or aggressiveness towards those who think differently from us, regardless of political persuasion. All elective government position holders, local, regional, or national, eventually must cease, and the days of those we like or dislike must also do. Of course, it is only in free societies like ours that such an end eventually comes. The world is full of examples where that’s not the case, and elected officials try to remain in power forever. For them, that is “The Word.”  

Now, we begin recovery time. It gives us an opportunity to renew friendships or family relations that may have been frayed by our politics, whether intentional or not. That’s as it must be, of course. Friends and family are part of our eternal nature; their frailty isn’t. Break bread with them. Ignore carbohydrates. We started our article with this title: “A Word to the Wise.”

We end it with another: “A Word to the Wise is sufficient.” And don’t forget this: “Silence is Golden.” Go for the Gold! I don’t believe you need more from me. 

And that is my Point of View today. So Long.