When I was a kid, I used to think a lot of strange stuff. One of those went as follows:
What if what I say is actually not what the person hears. And what if what he says is not what I actually hear either. What if what I said turned into something else when he heard it and the same happened when he spoke in a way that continued the conversation.
I decided to give up thoughts like this to keep myself sane. But, one day, when I was older, I came back to this thought, I don't know why. But this time, the thought stuck to me. And I realized that this was indeed true, just not in the naive way I had once assumed it.
The world is what it is. The problem is what we assume we perceive is not necessarily the object in itself. The word used to define something is nothing but a lifeless shell. It is the human perception that chooses to use it as a pointer. The idea is puissantly expressed by Henry Ward Beecher when he says "All words are but pegs to hang ideas on". I shall also mention one of Khalil Gibran's quotes here simply because it appeals to the idea I am trying to present here. All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.
