early thoughts

I am up and I am excited. Actually I just had 5 hours of sleep but that's ok. I am having my coffee and breakfast now. There is still no morning light, though. Anyway, since I'm here, let me ask you this. I was reading this bit from the Communicating report I told you about before, in which Jane Goodall, a very famous person who studied the life of chimpanzees for a long time (the technical name is primatologist) talks about Why words hurt. So she starts by saying:

"I think we’re still in a muddle with our language, because once you get words and a spoken language it gets harder to communicate."

Well, I wouldn't say 'harder' but maybe 'more complicated' since you can convey a lot more with words than with gestures. But then she goes on to say:

"And as you’ve probably experienced, it is much harder to forget a word than it is a slap."

Do you think this is true? I have been thinking about this, but it seems to me that I would forget a particular nasty word that someone said to me but I would never ever forget that this person slapped me! I can't say that I have a personal experience of being slapped (which is nice :) ) but I can't help but think that it's more likely for someone to retell a particular incident that happened in the past as: "and he called me something then slapped me on the face".

Not exactly happy eid thoughts, I know :) but it's interesting. Anyway, got to go.

Mai