Nearly all of us (that can) use language every day. It is incredibly useful; don’t get me wrong. But, as with everything else, it is not perfect. There are trade-offs to be made in using language. One of the many pitfalls of language…of words…is that they only approximate something. A tree is a tree, it is not the word tree (nor Baum (German) or arbre (French) or 树 (simplified Chinese according to Google). Curiously, a tree to me is not even the same as a tree for you…and of course neither of these mental projections are actually trees anyway.
This is not an esoteric discussion. The power of words, of labels, is profound. How often have we either tried to force something into a discrete little box (label) only to find it squirming out? Or similarly, how often have we found ourselves crammed (rather unceremoniously) into an odd fitting label by a friend or acquaintance? You are you. You are not a man or woman or a forty-something person of a particular nationality or disposition. Those are all just handy approximations or sign posts pointing toward what you really are. They are short cuts that never actually describe you.
Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know. The truth cannot be communicated, it must be lived. We need to move into truth and into the tree. Sit with a tree. See deep inside it. Talk to it. Have the tree see you and love you. Truth, seeing, loving, helping, being, these are real. Seven fifteen on Thursday is not. Three point something grade point averages and brunettes and stay-at-home fathers are illusions as well.
Just have a great day. Don’t put a label to it. Know it. It ceases to be once we (compulsively) name it and categorize it and put it into a book. Particle physics comes to mind for me, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and poor old nervous Schrödinger’s cat.
Another way to say this is that there are no absolutes (which I always get squeamish saying because I think that is an absolute statement, thus internally inconsistent?). There is no perfect joy…there is always a seed of pain contained therein. What if we looked at it from below or from outer space? Would it still appear exactly as joyous? What if we had just caught a cold or gotten over one? What if we had gas? Would event “X” still contain the same “joy-ness”?
I have personally had an aversion to labels for as long as I can remember. They make me feel uncomfortable. I have always recoiled a bit at their casual overuse (is the word “always” itself part of the problem?) Why did I say “part”….isn’t that [always] implied? But I have for many moons been very aware that some of my close friends and family appear to derive as much comfort in putting a succinct label onto everything as I experience unease in doing so. We are all different, every day at every point in space interacting with every other person and rock and idea (spoken or not). It is all strung together and nameless. It just is and that is pretty darn good.
Don’t burden yourself or limit those you love by forcing everything into a box. Go an hour without labeling anything. Just have feelings, don’t label them. Love a sunrise, don’t describe it, don’t measure it, don’t compare it to yesterday’s sunrise, don’t get attached to it. When in doubt go silently into your body and just be. When you want to breathe, breathe. When you want to sit, sit. Listen. Speak without words or thoughts. Live eternally and perfectly-ish for a few minutes or forever, then help your neighbor do the same. There is no separation.
