"And man became a living soul.” (Bereishis 2:7)

Onkelus defines “a living soul” as a speaking spirit.

The Torah testifies that this is the essence of man; the faculty of speech separates man from animal. (Rav Aharon Kotler Mishnas Rav Aharon)

Anyone familiar withIsraelrecognizes the underbelly of society here — the cat population. Israeli cats are amazingly resilient. They know how to forage for food (thanks to the Cohens’ son who left their garbage out) how to find refuge from the cold (the Silvers’ carriage) and shelter from the sun (Birnbaums’ shed). They even know how to protect their young while streaking across the street inches away from an approaching car. Healthy instincts innovative traits and concern for offspring. What advantage does man have over all of these?

Speech.

Man must choose between good and bad. The deciding factor in his choice is his ruach — the spirit of his soul. The other parts of his soul the nefesh and neshamah merely influence the choices of the ruach. (ibid.)

Words are our most precious commodity. Yet we let them loose with a torrent of sound not even noticing their loss. “I’ve told you this a thousand times.” “In a million years I’ll never understand you!”

All right so it’s not exactly a thousand times or a million years… What significance can a single sentence have anyway?

Tremendous significance.

When thoughts lead to speech for good or bad they influence our opinions and middos. Once a thought is set in speech it becomes engraved upon the soul. (ibid.)

What we say determines what we’ll feel.

Take a nightmare for example — the kind that you wake up with in the morning and refuses to leave even when you rub the last traces of sleep from your eyes. You vaguely remember that there was at least one terrorist and a fire plus one child you couldn’t locate and an inability to utter a sound.

“Just a dream” you say trying to shake it off as you wash your hands. “Dreams don’t mean anything.” You work to put it out of your mind as you tackle the job of waking up whoever’s still horizontal.

Recently my friend had a bad dream. She called me with an SOS call early in the morning. “It was soooo terrifying” she said. “I can’t get it out of my mind.” While I’m still groping for my shoes she’s going into gory descriptions of every detail of the terrorist fire and muteness. “I called you because I must do hatavas chalom ASAP before anything starts to come true!” I wanted to calm her down but the clock was ticking and I had to cut her short.

Later that afternoon I called her back and she still sounded petrified.

“I’ve had the most horrible day. I keep reliving the scene seeing that look…” And off she went again filling in her fear with words words words.

No wonder she had a terrible day after endlessly recounting that dream. Our words are not the result; they determine the result.

Likewise speech strongly influences a person’s inner self. It says in Mishlei (15:1): “A soft response turns away wrath.” This refers not only to his friend’s anger but also to the anger of the one responding. Often when one responds strongly it arouses one’s anger more. When one responds humbly he calms down for external emotion triggers inner emotion and the mouth expresses what’s in the heart and mind. (ibid.)

“One second. Calm down. This morning you told me you dreamed about a terrorist. Now you’re up to five terrorists! Plus where did that snake come into the picture? You didn’t mention a snake this morning.”

“I didn’t? Maybe there wasn’t a snake. But I hate snakes and this was as scary as a snake.”

The effort to stop the overflowing volcano was difficult. But after a few tries she finally heard.

She stopped and made an audible effort to calm down.  The lava stopped. Her breathing slowed. By the time we hung up she’d let go of her dream.

Words. They build and destroy. Comfort and confuse.

We don’t say words because that’s what we feel — we feel that way because that’s what we said…

Enough said!