The Words that Deceive

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.

In the practical setting, I am not denying the power words have, but what I wish to convey here is that words only possess that power by assumption and not by their own right. Words are the conduits for our true perceptions, but that which was meant to liberate has become a blinker too. Words cheat us of true understanding and free perception.

So, coming back to my kiddo-thoughts, what I later understood was what a person says is different from what is understood. The mind is the filter here. Every word carries with it the history of a million experiences, the connotations that hang from it are numerous and truly impossible to convey. Unless someone is writing for a scientific paper or something to that effect, it is near impossible to agree on one meaning to many sentences that seek to convey the ideas a person has, or even emotions. 

Emotions, they make a very good point here. Your words cannot  convey to another person what you feel. For a person who has never been in love, if you try to express the love you feel for another person, they will not understand it. What you have given them is simply a shell. Even more, consider happiness. If you tell someone you are happy, you do not convey to the person your state of being or your perception of it. You have simply given him a word, happy. What he does now is he tries to understand it from his perspective of what he has felt. So, in truth, though you may both be communicating with the same word, happy, the perception of happiness of the one might be totally different from the other. Also, your conveying the word happy does not make the person happy. So, yet again, the word is but a shell.

The power of the word is by association, of a manifold kind. The word's power derives a lot from the listener, but much more so from the speaker. His charisma, his character, his convictions, these give much more power to them than good grammar. Because when such a man speaks these words, what is being imposed upon you is not the word or its meaning, but a living thing, the persona of the speaker. These are words with life, they speak beyond words. Well, I am a distracted kid and I do digress.

But I seem to have conveyed the point I wanted to here. Words have helped us, but they do serve as a bar too. To speaking our hearts to others. It is a very striking statement "Much more is spoken in silence than in speech". But I would like to mention another thing which I feel is much more pertinent. Words deceive us too from ourselves. 

One very striking experience I had recently was when I was listening to music. I realized that I am not listening to the music, I am verbalizing it in my mind, a pathetic onomatopoeia. It was a real shocker to me. Now I'm making an effort to truly hear the music, the sound that makes it up.

This is the same with our thoughts and perceptions too, words deceive us into not being able to truly understand ourselves. Words are like moulds, they limit as much as they express. This is a point I am finding pretty hard to express, so I could only ask you to experience it for yourself. Touch something, let some water flow over your hand, feel it, but do not put it into words, just experience it. Then try to see if the words can completely define your experience. This is an inherent problem in expression, teaching, talking or any form of communication. 

The only idea I have now for piercing this veil is one I got from a great thinker, Sri Aurobindo, 

“There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind's immobility and thought-free stillness.

When mind is still, then truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence.”