by Maria Baeck

Created on: June 23, 2009   Last Updated: June 26, 2009

Words - an art form or a form of art?

Have you ever thought about how careless we sometimes are with our choice of words? We use plenty of them and sometimes they are aimlessly merely a way to fill gaps. But aren't words meant to fill gaps...?! Aren't words meant to help us express and explain...?

Yes, indeed. But how come then, we, on the one hand, resort to using words like for example "thingy", instead of the real McCoy? And on the other hand, we add a superfluous number of words, sometimes without thinking, and thereby burying the actual message? Isn't the whole point of using words to communicate a specific thought (like I'm trying to do here)? The general idea is to be able to make ourselves understood by being precise, right?

How many times have you tried to explain a particular feeling or thought, and the person at the receiving end looks at you nonplussed as if the message took a leap right over their head, or they get upset, or a misunderstanding is formed, although the words were carefully chosen not to have that effect?

It happens "all the time". Why? I very carefully toss and turn expressions in search of the perfect words, the words that taste exactly like what I'm trying to express, the words which sneak into place like a lover's kiss, that extra dimension. We paint life's tapestry and a beautiful one too, with our fire-cracker of a tool: the spoken, read and written word. And being able to put words to thoughts are very satisfying and at times even gratifying.

Well, you would have thought it is a fairly straight forward manoeuvre, wouldn't you? On the surface my vocabulary looks the same as yours. But if you think about it, is it really the same? We might have learned the same words and we might spell them the same, but is our understanding of those words the same? Although we have the good old dictionary to fall back on, it is still our experiences in life that puts the final touches to a words meaning. In my experience we form an attachment with everything we learn, we create a symbol, a representation of what it means to us. And sometimes that attachment is of good, sometimes not so good.

It is much the same in that we all have our own truth, and that our experiences create our world the way we see it. My experience is my experience and can never be your experience. Why? Because my experience is tainted and formed by my reality, similar to how some people view their glass half-empty, some half-full. It's the same principle.

So, and herein lies the paradox, isn't it amusing to think that no matter how much we try and pinpoint our choice of words, aiming at precision, our counterpart will never ever understand the meaning of our choice of words, the exact same way we do.

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