The Limitations of Language

How often do you get surprised by your own words?

I reread my blog post from yesterday, and felt with a bit of a sinking feeling that maybe the tone I thought I was conveying was not, I don't think, conveyed :)  (I am feeling rather paranoid at the moment though, so who knows?  I am worrying far too much about what other people think, and second-guessing everything, which is a pretty ridiculous way of giving away your own power.  Much better to take that energy worrying about other people and putting it into being wary of my own immediate perceptions.  That sounds like a negative, but it is not - questioning my limited perceptions is often illuminating and sometimes I even get surprised by the joy that comes from that.  It takes me out beyond myself, into the field).

But anyway, where was I?  It is an interesting feeling when you reread something that you wrote in a lighthearted, slightly self-deprecating (I am Australian, after all) but ultimately positive mood, only to discover on your second reading that maybe it reads more small-minded and cynical and negative than you actually felt or intended.

Does this happen often with you when you write?  Or even when you speak?  Are you sometimes surprised afterwards at how people respond (or don't respond) to what you thought was plainly conveyed?  Human interaction is an art, after all.  And writing as a method of communication is a sort of strange thing to do, when you think about it.  Funny little scrabbled bits on a page or a screen are a step removed from conveying them ourselves.  And even conveying them ourselves ... well, when you think about the complexity of it all, to convey something from my mind to yours involves not only my ability to use the right words in the first place, but to get those words out past my face and body to you in a way that you get where I'm coming from.  The chances of you picking up on my slightly raised eyebrow, or my quirky use of a word that in my family had a slightly different connotation than it did in yours, is complexified by the fact that I remind you a little of your auntie who was mean, compounded by the fact that you are distracted by your iPhone pinging and that you don't understand why I'm talking about this particular thing because you have forgotten my comment about it yesterday, and if you remembered that then what I am saying right this minute would take on a completely different complexion.

Really and honestly, connecting with each other - even in person with all of the non-spoken body language that according to some conveys as much as 90% of our intention - is an art, and a hit-and-miss affair.  It requires time and questioning, silence and processing, a reasonable memory, focus and patience, shifting gears and changing lanes and using your indicators.  And even then we can't ever really truly-rooly completely understand where another person is coming from or who another person is.

Which is a fearful thing.  Other people can be hell, but even on good days they can often be scary to us, incomprehensible, even the ones we love, especially in the uber-fast turbulent world we all find ourselves in now.  But yet for all of that, the person in front of you being able to hurt you, misunderstand you, abuse you, is a mystery.  They are dark and beautiful and deep, of far more complexity and beauty than they often know themselves, or that your fears or your media want you to believe.

Because ultimately, despite the fact that we are all separate and isolated, out beyond that where the silence is, there we are all one, no matter how fucked-up with fear and greed it gets.  And science and the spirituality of all religions are in agreement on that one.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.

~ Rumi