I can’t begin to remember how often I’ve been at a loss for words. Whether during crisis or being overwhelmed by the glory of creation or just plain old ignorance or stupidity. Life just seems to serve you moments when your attempts to verbalize what you are sensing turn out to be ....well feeble.
Now in the past I considered that a weakness or a shame, again depending on the situation but I’m beginning to think it might be just the way it should be. Some of my most profound interactions with other beings, both human and animal, occurred in utter silence. My relationship with my wife is certainly representative. “You say it best, when you say nothing at all.” The song goes. And for me, it’s perfectly correct.
My interactions with pets certainly back that up, if just anecdotally. Which got me thinking about all the work that goes into describing the creation and the Creator for various belief systems. And for me, it’s another of those situations when words just don’t do the topic justice. I don’t need to think of the Creator as a father, or a judge, or a surrogate brother who can only approach the King on my behalf. That kind of assigning of traits to me puts limits on the concepts and draws fences in places they shouldn’t be. I have enough rules, regulations and supposed freedoms leaning on me, I don’t need somebody using language to hem me in.
If you need an example of what I’m talking about just sit face to face with someone and stare into each other’s eyes for as short a time as five minutes. Don’t say a word. You will be amazed at how much you communicate without opening your mouth. I once sat in an interrogation room for three and a half hours with a serial rapist who specialized in victimizing mentally handicapped people. The last half hour I spent staring him down with neither of us saying a word. He refused to leave the room even though I had told him the interrogation was over. He told me more in those 30 minutes of silence than he did in the first three hours.
I dont think it’s a coincidence some of the most influential writers in history at one time or another spent time in solitary confinement. The silence of being alone has a way of purifying your thought process to where you can express hidden secrets only detected by stark aloneness. Here’s where I think technology and the electronic media have let us down some or at least we failed to realize it can’t be a complete substitute for human interaction. You can’t replicate the chemistry that goes on between living things look directly at one another within arms reach of one another.
Some of our inability to empathize with other beings might have a little to do with that separation and reliance on words presented one tweet length at a time.