More Than Words
So it’s the long weekend and my best friend is coming into town! I’m so excited. People keep asking me what we are going to do. The funny thing is, me and her don’t have to do anything. We can just sit around talking, that is what we do best. Then we get something to eat.
We decided to take some long walks since the weather is nicer. Again we will find some pretty trails in the woods to walk in and then just talk. I find that talking is the thing that I do best with my friends. Everything else is secondary.
I really like talking. I’m good at it too. When I teach in college, I don’t lecture at my kids, I talk to them. We have discussions and when I’m presenting material, I do it in a conversational way. I think much of my writing is also conversational in nature. I’m just talking on the page.
When I was like five I was really quiet, but then when I turned like nine or ten, I became a talker non-stop. A talker and a laugher. I like to laugh as much as I talk. If there was a talking and laughing marathon, I think I could win.
It should be a sport.
I don’t play sports, probably because they don’t involve a lot of talking. I think I became a teacher and a professor because I like to talk. In the mornings I get up and do a lot of stuff without talking to anyone, like meditating and exercising and writing. But after a few hours, I need to talk to someone. I do need that time alone too, but I’m not one of those people that can go a whole day without talking to other people.
My love of communication is probably another reason I love writing. I like to express myself, talking and writing allows you to do this. Many writers are more introverted than me, but personally, for me, I love to use words while talking and writing.
Words are limited though, we must admit that. They can be misunderstood. There are things we feel that we cannot express in words. A hug cannot be expressed in words, it can only be expressed physically. Laughter cannot be expressed in words. Either can crying.
As humans, we are just a big ball of feelings. We try to put those feelings into thoughts, which we try to make into words, but sometimes some things get lost in translation. How do you say what you really feel in words that people can understand?
I have been struggling with that question all my life. How do we say things so people understand our hearts? Our souls? Or even our minds?
It is a difficult task to communicate but it may be the most important thing we do as humans with each other. I want to tell my dad that I love him. It makes me want to cry when I think about telling him that because his health is faltering and I worry that he will pass away sooner than I want him to. Well, I never want him to, so there’s that.
But they say you should tell people you love how you feel about them. I worry I will start crying if I tell my dad how I feel. I’m worried he will start crying. Then my mom will come to the room and she will start crying. I will call my sister and it just goes on and on.
Talking about your feelings is difficult. I go to therapy twice a month. I used to love it and I still do sometimes. Can we talk more about Nina? But when we started to dig down to my real core issues, it was sometimes difficult to articulate them without experiencing pain.
But we should feel our feelings, and often that is only possible when we talk about them and put them into words. But again, we are not always able to capture our true feelings in the words we say or write. But the expression through language helps us to understand our feelings.
That is why they say journal writing is so good for the soul. I don’t actually write in a journal, this blog was meant to be somewhat of a public journal. Ironically I will put this journal out there on the Internet but I’m paranoid that if I write in an actual journal, someone will read it and discover how crazy I really am.
I’m serious. They have taken the journals of many prominent writers and over-analyzed them and labeled the writers insane. If you were to hear anyone’s real thoughts, we’d all be locked up in a psych ward. The truth is crazy.
And isn’t that what we are after, after all, the truth? The truth about ourselves and other people. Can we really tell the whole truth about ourselves with words? What other choice do we have? Sometimes artists just make a painting, or singers sing a song, that relays their feelings more accurately.
What can we really say to each other with words? There is a lot we can and do say. But there is also a lot left unsaid.
nina.