When all is said and done that’s what words are. The depth of this can be surreal.
Thoughts are often abstract, complex, and mixed. They are unclear and tend to be varied in more ways than one.
When thoughts get blended with feelings it adds a whole other layer of complexity. There are times when there is just no easy way to express them outside of your own head.
Words are the end result of thoughts. When they need to find a place outside of your mind, communicated directly or indirectly, words come into play that expresses those thoughts so that others might share them.
Understanding is another matter. Variables in cultures, languages, regions, and other factors mean that individual words can take on any number of meanings. One word can mean a lot of different things depending on timing, context, and more.
Take “interesting,” for example. Interesting can simply mean “arousing curiosity or interest, holding or causing attention.” However, in the sense of the Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times” it means something ominous and potentially distressing. Then, factor in this exchange from the movie Serenity:
Mal: “Define interesting?”
Wash: “Oh god, oh god, we’re all going to die?”
Interesting can also serve as a synonym for many other words, as well as carry weighty implications in a question of emotion. One word, an expression of a wide range of thoughts and feelings, lots of different meanings.
Interpretations will vary
When I was in college I had to take two semesters of Directing (as in the live theatre, which my degree happens to be in). During the first semester, the professor gave us a play (I do not recall its name) and had us analyze it. In-depth. Like, tear it apart almost word-by-word to find all its supposed hidden meaning and nuance.
The professor maintained that every name has meaning, for example. While that is true of many authors, I can tell you from my own experience that this is complete bullshit.
Yet he was able to find meaning in all of these nuances. Meaning that, to be perfectly honest, I doubt entirely existed.
Yes, once you take the thoughts outside of your head and put them to the page or screen they become open to interpretation. You may have, as the writer, intended one thing – while others take a far deeper meaning outside of it.
I read an article back in the 1990s about Kurt Cobain and the lyrics to the song “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” He was expressing in the article his dismay about how the song had been interpreted as the great anthem of the angst of Generation X.
The song Cobain wrote was actually utter nonsense. While painting a ceiling, someone walked in and commented “it smells like Teen Spirit in here” – which was a brand of deodorant.
Have you ever heard the slow, deeply moving cover of the song by Tori Amos? Take the assumed angst interpretation of the song and magnify it a few times and that’s what it is. Something that meant nothing in particular to one person – in this case, its creator – took on depth and meaning as interpreted by others that nobody could have foreseen.
Words matter
It is for this reason that the words you use matter. When spoken it’s impossible to unspeak them. After you said something, if someone recorded it you can’t undo it.
When written you really cannot escape it. Although, if you are Donald Trump, you can reinterpret the thoughts you have put into words to mean something that has no basis whatsoever in reality. But that’s a whole other digression.
Thoughts are made manifest for sharing with others by becoming words. When written, they are immortalized and further opened to interpretation, alternate meanings, and any number of digressions, diversions, and possibilities.
This is unavoidable. What I write may mean something to me that it doesn’t mean to you. Just because my thoughts made manifest are visible as words for you to read doesn’t mean that you will take my point as I intended it. That can be utterly infuriating.
This, I believe, is one of the problems in today’s society. Words are spoken and written and then argued about depending on interpretation. Words matter, which is why when you say or write anything remotely controversial or inflammatory it’ll be pulled apart and digested, regurgitated, and otherwise picked at like a week-old scab.
Like the picked-at scab, with words, there might be blood.
Release the thoughts to the wild
Once you share your thoughts in word form it is often in your best interest to just let them go. Why? Because how they will be read and interpreted leaves your control the moment you share them.
My words may be clear and to the point, but that doesn’t mean that you, the reader, will experience them as I intended. This is because, like me, you are the only one inside your head. Only you can think, feel, and act as you do. I can’t do it for you just like you can’t do it for me. Ergo, your perceptions will color your interpretations of the words that make up my thoughts I have shared with you.
When you accept this truth you open yourself up to better understanding that your thoughts can take new meaning when they are shared outside your head as words. And that’s ok because maybe the interpretation of another will give you clarity you did not have before.
Sometimes those words were expressed as a means to share thoughts, yes…but also as a means to gain new insights and create new thoughts. Turning thoughts to words is a source of clarification for me. Yet your interpretation of my word thoughts is also a potential point for clarification.
Words matter but they should not be precious. Choosing them with care matters, but accepting that meaning is individual also it expresses.
When you can release your thoughts as words to the world at large and let them run free you create potential, possibility, and more. Set the thoughts free to the world in your words and see how they might return to you.
Thank you for taking part in my ongoing journey.
Thank you for joining me, and for inspiring me and my words.
This is the fortieth entry of my personal writing blog. Please take a moment to check out the collection of my published writing, which can be found here.
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