Just as in you are what you eat, it is even more precise to say you are what you say, what you read, and what you write.

With that question, the two of us had a long conversation about whether language is a tool in our hands or we in its hands.

Language is a double-edged sword that can imprison or set us free.

How and why many of us blindly repeat words, idioms, and phrases passed down to us like shabby clothes from our parents or ancestors, without even pondering the exact meaning of what we say.

Language is the beginning and the end of what makes us human. The language we do remains alive way after we depart this world. Language is in our mothers’ first lullaby, the first time we tell someone ‘I love you’, and we often talk about the significance of someone’s last words before they died.

[M]any people say things like ‘investing in a love relationship’ as if they are talking about investing in stock market or in financial projects. That is a customer not a human or a citizen language. This type of language is filled with clues about how we have internalized ourselves as customers.

What does it mean when language becomes the only 'home' to inhabit when all else is lost for displaced and exiled writers (and people)?

[T]he phrase 'first world problems.' The first problematic issue with this phrase is the assumption that we live in three (or more) worlds rather than one planet.