Personal blog: "On the limitations of language", by bonzopoe

There are authors who say that the Eskimos have 50 ways of calling the color white. Others say hundreds. Others even say there are a thousand. I don't know if it's true or just a myth, but how wonderful it would be to be able to recognize so many subtleties in the white to be able to call it a thousand different ways. Or hundreds of different ways. Or fifty.

If we applied that to emotions, I wouldn't have the problem that I have now, of not knowing how to describe what I feel. Because as much as I look for a word to express it, I can't find it. I'm not entirely happy, but I'm not sad either. I feel calm, but at the same time restless (otherwise I would not be writing this). I am serene, but anxious at the same time. I feel at peace, but at the same time expectant, alert. Damn, I wish I was an Eskimo!

And it is that language is a door and a lock at the same time. It allows us to communicate, name things, and thus understand them and understand each other. But at the same time it limits us, because sometimes it is insufficient to express ourselves. Otherwise, there would be no poetry, which is our attempt to express the inexpressible, and the inexpressible of the expressible.

What happens when we cannot find the right word to express something? How do we communicate with others, if all we have are words, with all their imperfections and possibilities? What to do when the mud of the word is not enough to create the sculpture we need to express what we feel? In that impotence I am now. Relative impotence, because it doesn't weigh me down, it doesn't bark at me, but wags its tail at me as if understanding my feelings.

Because although it seems ironic, and even absurd, words limit us when expressing ourselves. They are like photographs, which can only aspire to frame us, in the most beautiful way possible, perhaps, an isolated fragment of reality.

A fragment that exalts part of what is the whole, but ignores everything that escapes the limited register of an emulsified paper. Smells, textures, sounds, temperatures, humidity, are left out of that registry, which no matter how beautiful it is, is limited, and in that sense, endowed with the falsity of those who do not lie, but do not tell the whole truth.

The words we use to express emotions are the same. They are caricatures, half-truths of what they want to express. What really are sadness and joy, love and hate, fear and happiness, ecstasy and anguish, and the rest of the limited alphabet that we use to express what we feel?

There is no word that can really express a feeling, an emotion, but they are all we have, they are the crutches we have built to walk together, accompanied and not alone, and with the illusion of understanding each other.

And yet what a blessing language is, that allows us to put one foot in front of the other, and advance in the finite knowledge of what we are. What a great number of wonders it has given us despite its limitations, which are nothing more than a reflection of ours.

Of our lack of definition, of our ambiguity. Of our mystery, of which it is an observer and a part. Interpret and protagonist. Builder and construct. Fact and fiction that we were, are, and can be, despite its imperfections, and despite ourselves.

Thank you very much for reading this post and dedicating a moment of your time. Until next time and remember to leave a comment.