Life is a story I tell myself.
And I daren’t tell it wrong
for fear of the unhappy ending.
But what is unhappy?
And what is an ending
if a beginning is found
on the other side
of each new end?

Life is a story I tell myself.
And I daren’t tell it wrong
for fear of the unhappy ending.
But what is unhappy?
And what is an ending
if a beginning is found
on the other side
of each new end?
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.
Where do thoughts go
once we have thought them?
Where does the wind go
once the storm has passed?
And why do so few wonder about life,
why do they not ask more
magical questions?
Like where do thoughts go?
(And the wind: are they together, somewhere?)
And how is it that these words
came to be called
words
when there is surely
a deeper dimension to language
and life
that will never be captured
by labels
and concepts.