Words Are Not BIG Enough

The room glowed orange. And LOVE. A wooden carving of the word sat against the wall in my room, opposite my meditation cushion, on top of a painting of my favourite tree (the letters light up if I really want them to. I very rarely want them to.)

I’ve become increasingly frustrated with words and their inability to capture and express the absolute truth of the concepts they frame. Love is one of the best examples of that, for me.

Love, for instance, is on a spectrum, for starters. There are differing types of love, differing levels of depth, differing levels of understanding of it as a concept, differing levels of experience with it.

And here is the problem I have: LOVE, the word, is far too small.

It is too small to capture

and hold

the vast ocean

that love

truly

is

to me.

So I get a little frustrated.

Words, in general, are a little frustrating to me, because even people we share a language with will never know the exact meaning of a word according to our perception and expression of it.

An example. I experienced the most profound moment the other day, when discussing some things with my beautiful, spiritual counsellor. She is trying to help me work through some of my energy blocks, at the moment, but as we discussed a particular topic I found myself fumbling. I knew exactly why.

Words. They were vastly limiting us in a few ways: one way being our different perception of particular words (it seemed we weren’t quite on the same page). Another being the energy beneath the concept I was trying to express. The whole thing seemed far bigger than any means of communication we had in our toolbox to discuss it with. It was as if we were trying to catch a whale with a plastic fishing rod. It was just never going to happen.

I even said to her that I felt so frustrated because I couldn’t possibly express the depth of what I was trying to convey to her in words. This was a feeling. But it was also something so much more than a feeling.

I don’t need to capture the entire universe and express it in form. But if I did…words couldn’t possibly reach the heights I’d need to climb to pick that apple.

I wonder if there is any human tool that could.

I wonder a lot of things, actually.

Perhaps I’ll keep wondering.