186. Words Say Too Much

The problem with language is that it always says too much. This is especially true when we’re trying to talk about how we feel. Our words come out sounding like a solemn declaration of fact, as though the emotions we’re describing are substantial, permanent, and unchanging, when they might be none of these things.

Perhaps our words only describe how we’re feeling at this one moment in time. Perhaps the feeling will have vanished in the next hour, the next day, or the next month. Perhaps the feeling doesn’t have the mass our words seem to grant it. Perhaps it is only meagre and small.

Not only do we often not know the intensity or future duration of the feelings we’re experiencing, we also sometimes aren’t sure we’re experiencing them at all. For our awareness of ourselves is not perfect, and it’s easy to unintentionally say something false. The certainty of words does not seem to fit with the uncertainty of ourselves.

Realizing this, we might try to avoid words entirely. We might instead attempt to act out our feelings, in the hope of signalling to others what lives inside us without giving it the weight of words. If we do still venture into the domain of language, we do so with our guard fully raised. We know we’re at risk of saying more than we want to say, and so we use a wide range of modifiers to lessen the impact of our nouns and verbs.

The task of accuracy is never an easy one. It’s a fight with language itself, a battle we must wage merely to communicate, and it often goes awry. This is why we frequently regret what we say. It ends up being heard in a way we never intended, the words carrying far more meaning and permanence than we wanted to convey.

Sometimes we try to overcome this by talking at length, by using more words to deflate the ones that feel too strong. Even then, we’re never quite sure we’ve said the right thing. If the other comforts us with a reassuring echo of our message, we might be satisfied. But still there remains the interminable worry that language has already done more than we asked.