You know, for supposedly being the only species capable of advanced communication, humans are really bad at communicating.

This isn’t going to be a rant or a rave about how some particular person angered me with their inability to communicate effectively. This is simply the expression of an idea that occurred to me today. It’s sort of the final piece to a puzzle where it’s impossible to really tell what the puzzle is until you have all of the pieces. Needless to say, this little idea was particularly revelatory.

I’ve struggled for a long time with this. I’ve wondered how it is that everyone else in the world seems to automatically understand everything that is said by everyone else, where I tend to be very confused at times. I’ve also wondered why those same people that understand everything else that’s said by every other person never really seem to understand what I am trying to say to them.

At first I just thought that I wasn’t being clear, so I spent a very long period of time working on saying exactly what I meant to say, and being perfectly honest. This didn’t solve the problem, unfortunately. In fact, I sometimes think it made it worse. So why is it that I, or any other person, could be so deeply misunderstood so often? I have a theory, and it can be boiled down to one word:

Language.

The first flaw with language is that it is independent of the individual. Language is created by a society which mutually agrees on certain sounds, gestures, and symbols which will represent certain objects, people, places, or ideas.

It is a way for many people to understand and be understood in a mutually beneficial way. There’s also the benefit of having a particular “code” which is known only to those in the “in-group” which allows for free communication without the risk of everyone picking up on what you’re saying. The problem with it, however, is that it is an objective body of concepts which a person has to access in order to be understood or understand.

So, in order for a person to be understood, he or she must express the ideas or emotions in terms of something that is actually foreign to his or her mind. I have always considered it interesting when people ask me if I think in English or in Russian. Obviously I do have thoughts which are formulated into word form, which are usually in English, but I have a decent percentage of those word-thoughts in Russian as well. However, those word-thoughts only make up about 3% of the stuff that goes on inside me. I don’t usually think in words. I usually think in…things that aren’t words. I suspect that is true for most people.

The second flaw with language is how much is inherently “lost in translation.” Because we have to access that objective, foreign bank of words in order to express ourselves, we really are translating our thoughts and emotions into words. Ever wondered why not every concept translated directly from language to language?

Classic example: The word вообще in Russian usually translates as “in general” in English, except that isn’t really what the Russians are trying to say. I honestly believe that there is no real English equivalent in English, although I’m sure others would disagree. The point is that in some contexts it simply doesn’t mean “in general”. I think that is a perfect indication that different societies and different cultures came up with a designated word for a designated thought or concept or emotion based on the need to use it.

The real problem now is that if I ever want to express the concept embodied in вообще in English, I have to spend 5 minutes explaining what I’m trying to express, which is not what I want to do. I understand the concept perfectly, and every other Russian-speaking American that I know understands it perfectly, and yet we all have the same problem expressing it. It’s because we are limited by our language. The third flaw with language is that understanding requires true empathy. In order to really understand what someone is trying to say, you have to understand everything about their background and experiences.

In other words, the words (W) that one uses to express an emotion can also be used by another person to express an entirely different emotion. So if W can be used to express two completely different concepts, the only way for the first person to understand the second is for her to understand why W came to mean what the second person intends.

So what was the idea that came to me? I suddenly realized that my inability to accurately communicate wasn’t my fault at all. The problem lies with the medium. It’s like trying to make a Skype call on a really slow computer. Half of what you say is stuck in frozen internet video chat land. The emotions that I have inside are almost too complex for me to understand before trying to translate them into a faulty medium and hope that someone else will figure it out on the other end.

I had tried to spent precious moments making incredibly intricate word paintings with ornate language in an attempt to capture every nuance of the emotion or idea, and I was doing it based on my own understanding of what words mean and how they are to be used. Unfortunately, not only was I boring my audience with my laborious wordplay, I was expecting the transmission of ideas to be decrypted without flaw on the other end. It was almost never flawless.

Emotion cannot really be expressed in words. At least not usually. There are certain geniuses of prose that have somehow managed to capture certain emotions with words, but I would consider only a very select few from the history of the world that actually had that ability. And even these masters would admit that they are incredibly limited in the emotions that they are capable of encapsulating on paper, for even the most skilled of poets cannot express emotion that has never been experienced.

I think I’m coming to my conclusion. Hopefully you can follow the stream of thought that led to this point. I’m going to take a fairly large leap, and I hope you see the connection, but I’ll understand if you don’t.

For centuries, certain emotions and ideas have been domesticated (by domesticated I mean tamed and fit into a box with a universal definition; so the emotion somehow means the same thing for everyone) to the point that we consider them to be universally similar. For example, how many poets or authors or artists have tried to tell us what love is? Practically every poet worth his salt has written a love ballad, and every author has written a love story. It seems to be one of those unifying emotions that humans have in common. However, how many of these poems or songs or paintings really capture the way you feel about the people you love? Ever noticed how they all come so close, but they don’t quite get it perfectly right? I know I do. Why is that?

But love is not a universally domesticated emotion. My feeling of love is unique to me. Nobody else feels exactly the same about their significant other as I do about mine. No other person, saying they love another person, is experiencing the exact same thing as I am when I say it. And yet we have one word for it. The ironic thing is that sometimes we try to judge whether someone else is really in love. We try to advise them by saying things like, “When you’re in love…” Are you starting to see the irony in a statement like that? Love is a personal, subjective emotion.

Another great example of this is pain. What is pain? Does anyone really know what pain is? And why is it that, although we have one word for it, there isn’t really a universal standard for pain? Why do some people experience serious pain in the presence of light or sound (migraines) and some don’t? Or why do some people fall into deep depression after ending a serious relationship, and others seem to be just fine? Same reason as before. Pain is not a universally domesticated emotion. It’s the same as with love. It’s literally impossible to accurately define pain using words, because pain, like love, is subjective.

So love songs aren’t really describing love, but rather the artist. And Taylor Swift isn’t really describing the angst from all of her ex boyfriends, she’s describing herself.

I feel like I’m treading trodden trails here.

I think what I’m trying to say is that we should all take a second to take stock of how we relate to our native tongues. Most of us don’t have the artistic chops to really express just what we are feeling, let alone what someone else is feeling, and yet somehow we tend to attribute certain emotions (and their accompanying explanations) to other people.

We try to explain to ourselves why a person feels the way that they do, in hopes that it will make us feel better about our own inaction. We walk around, very full of ourselves and our supposed command of our own language, when really, we are no more in command of our native language than we are in command of the seasons. If anything, our language commands us. It directs the way we think and molds us into a certain type of person.

That is, I think, why I prefer to just be what I’m trying to be, instead of always trying to express what I’m trying to be. The words just mess it up. Maybe the moral of this story is this:

When the fervor’s ablaze in your breast, And your heart would leap out of your chest, Try not first to speak. Try instead this technique: Let with action the yen be expressed.