Getting words out of our mind-box | my first illustration

Have you heard of the idea that a picture is worth a thousand words ? As a photography hobbyist, I have embraced this idea as my way of communicating with other people. My hope is that somehow the people that would see the photos I took would know the story that I want to share. But if I would be with no camera to hold, will I be able to tell a person the look of what I've see with my own eyes? Will I have to use a little or many words to describe how beautiful the sunset looked like yesterday?

In the book Big Ideas for Curious Minds: An Introduction to Philosophy that I'm currently reading, the philosophy talked about in the second chapter is Learn to say what's on your mind. It was a simple teaching that is very hard to do. I think everyone is familiar with the odd feeling of describing what they feel and sharing their thoughts by using words. It's even most difficult to be very specific in articulating what's going on in our minds.

For me, facts are easier said than the feeling I have on my mind. Like I can just easily tell a person that the color of sky is blue; but saying to that person that his/her actions made me upset, well that's going to be another story. Communicating through words can be really be a tiring thing to do but guess what, people will never know what you're thinking or feeling if you would just keep it hidden in your mind-box. Words must come out of our mind-box so the people around us will not have to guess our thoughts and feelings.

It was Ludwig Wittgenstein who wanted to know the how of getting other people to understand what is on our minds. He wanted to know how we can play with words in painting pictures only our mind could see —things that are only clear for us but not for others. Wittgenstein's perspective of misunderstanding is when two people have different pictures of things on their minds. If we want other people to get to know us, we'll have to use words to describe to them what's in our mind-box. We'll have to paint a picture of our thoughts and feelings using words, descriptive and specific, so that other people will understand us.

I have been enjoying my time reading the chapters of this book. I have been learning so much, teachings and philosophies I want to live out. If you want to read about Socrates' philosophy of needing to ask thewhy questions of the things we feel, I have also written something about it in my previous post.