I have been thinking a lot about what I say, and how I say it, why I think it important to say anything…

Somehow, what we have learned during the last few years in isolation has not meant silence…the speeches we have heard have been loud and public in our mind, on our televisions, in our ears…the noise is deafening.

So I thought today about Rhetoric…Aristotelian varieties where ethos, logos and pathos converge…maybe answers exist there to understand this whole thing.

Ethos is the thing that gives the speaker credibility to an audience and is based on character, good will and intelligence (emotional, spiritual, multiple)

Logos has always meant “the Word” and applies to the language that establishes what is true and “good” as in logic–readable and discernible–as proof of truths

Pathos like in pathology is about the hearer…the audience…filtered through another’s life and experience

There is no way I could know what that has been…what their nature has been…what baggage they carry or how my choices of words and actions could trigger the storm that would unsettle their life…especially if I, the speaker, fall short…except my motives be pure.

Keep growing…

Like this dollar left on the table

We are broken

Crumpled and torn

Battered and bitter

The singleness of a single

Standing alone

Needing and wanting but resolute in its significance

Up close you imagine the history

That from afar leaves little clue

Of the trauma and the pain

That tape and bandaids will never heal.