WORDS FAIL
Words fail me all the time. No stranger to the odd zing I feel when words seem to magically form into an idea I didn’t know I had, I’m also painfully aware of how hard it is to “get it right” when I’m hellbent on sharing an idea I do have.
Alone at my laptop, I can play around until something rings true, until a thought gels on the page. Since texting has become today’s primary communication between people, I spend way too much time and mental energy crafting even the briefest of texts (leaving aside the “emoji or no emoji” debates), for fear that my words will be misconstrued. Conversation can be downright paralyzing, as I can’t edit in real time. Recently I was on a Zoom book club with college classmates. I became so aware of the varied expressions on people’s faces as I was speaking that I got caught up trying to gauge whether they were getting what I was saying, that I lost the plot and forgot half of what I planned to say.
My fear of what gets “lost in translation,” between what I intend to say and how others interpret it has kept me from a lifelong desire to live in France. If I barely feel secure that I am coming across clearly in English, I’m doomed in a foreign language! Not to mention how I’ll misconstrue whatever is said to me. Closer to home, recently I visited the corner greenmarket, where I overheard a conversation between the Korean owner and his Latino employee. I couldn’t make a word of what they were saying, but they had no problem understanding each other!
The parable of the Tower of Babel tells us that once human beings shared a single common language. Alas, human arrogance forced God to punish us by creating multiple languages across nations and cultures, thwarting our ability to communicate, to stay safe, to get things done.
Yet some communities have used language barriers as a way to stay safe. A black Jamaican acquaintance shared how slaves applied different meanings to English words when speaking with each other so their masters would not understand what they were saying. And then there’s Spanglish: the way America’s Latinx people switch back and forth between Spanish and English mid-sentence and even mid-phrase, consciously or unconsciously shutting out anyone who’s not bilingual.
And yet, as a social species, we must communicate to survive, and language(s) is our greatest tool.
If we observe “reality,” or register our impressions of reality, closely enough and over a long enough time, and get some help from our friends and colleagues, there’s hope that language can help bridge the gaps between us. Think of words like the big boulders that primitive people dragged into place to form Stonehenge. These wise folk had patiently, perhaps painstakingly, observed the movements of the planets and stars. They then collaborated in the extraordinary (and surely painstaking, if not downright painful) task of erecting a structure that registered those movements, recording their knowledge for others across space and time. The result? A sculpture, a monument, a temple. A thing of beauty; a thing of power. A message written in stone.
So too do poets move the boulders of words, sounding out not just their meanings but their rhythms and sounds, to create poems that resonate in our souls. Composers cluster sounds into notes into compositions: noise becomes music. Painters arrange colors into forms to show aspects of our world hitherto unseen by the rest of us.
All too often, though, words (or sounds, or shapes, or colors) fail. Or perhaps we fail, unable to make use of the tools before us—or understand messages sent from others. Without vision, order, and a will to manifest, Stonehenge would just be a pile of rubble, an obstacle in our path, a mute presence in an inscrutable world. Without language training (for Stonehenge, a knowledge of the celestial patterns), we can’t decipher even the most elegant transmissions.
The solution? We all need to become better speakers, writers, and artists. We also need to become better listeners, readers, and audiences. Here I have to call out my dad, and his mother before him: both, when hard of hearing late in life, developed a knack for hearing only what they wanted to hear. How many of us do the same, mentally tuning out what we’d rather not acknowledge?
HOW CAN YOGA HELP?
Yoga invites us to slow down. We move the body patiently into new positions and stay there. We “read” our body-minds’ responses: alarm, surprise, discomfort, ease. We extend the breath; we pause between inhale and exhale. We sit in meditation until our agitated brains slip into alpha waves.
All of these practices lead us closer to our true selves. Freed of the impulsive urge to react to external stimuli, to run from discomfort and seek new pleasures, we may find ourselves less tempted to say anything at all. And when we do choose to speak from our authentic selves, our words ring true to all who listen. Having trained ourselves to listen to our own body-minds, we naturally hear others better.
And, just perhaps, we become a little less reliant on words.
Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said a lot of wise things about the limits of language (though scholars to this day dispute the accuracy of English translations of his work!). He believed that many things—in fact, our deepest truths—can’t be put into words. They simply “manifest.” He advised a poet friend:
“If only you do not try to utter what is unutterable, then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be—unutterably—contained in what has been uttered.” In other words, relax! And trust that what you really mean to say will come across.
Wittgenstein’s “unutterables” included aesthetics, ethics, and the metaphysical or “mystical.” The way I see it, perhaps more mundane “unutterables” shine through in tone of voice, pace of speech, facial expression, unconscious movement, body temperature, and myriad other physiological affects—not to mention the “energy” we disperse or consume from those around us. We hear a flushed person spew out a tumble of words differently from a serene person who pauses to let each word land. My students absorb a lot more information from the way I enter the studio than anything I speak as the “theme” of the class. Your dog or cat is probably a better reader of your internal barometer than any of us. For them language (the exact meaning of individual words) is probably more static than message. Not convinced? Try observing a conversation between people out of earshot, or watch a video with the sound turned off. You’ll be amazed at what comes through—and a lot less afraid next time you wonder whether your words have failed.
Plus the whole social/educational/cultural/political environment that shapes each of us into the individuals we are determines what we say and how we say it. We assume the words of a white male Republican senator to be colored (pun intended) by his upbringing in the American South. A rapper’s lyrics often carry the weight of a life lived in our country’s underbelly.
Messages often mutate and evolve across time and space. We read Homer through our best understanding of the lens of Ancient Greece and hope to get his “deeper” messages. We listen to Hip Hop as an outpouring of a segment of our contemporary American culture that previously had no public “voice” and grapple with the reality shared. The yoga I teach would probably be unrecognizable to the pioneers of yoga centuries ago in India. Yet I like to think the point of the practices–physical health, mental clarity, emotional balance, spiritual awakening—shine through.
And remember, not everything you think has to be said. To quote the Austrian philosopher one more time: “What we do not understand is best passed over in silence.”