Words Lack Depth

The weekly Grasshopper Notes essay from John Morgan for the week of of January 8th addresses the weakness of words to communicate depth.

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Transcript

Words Lack Depth

Some people have a way with words:  the orators, the writers, the pundits, the great teachers, just to name a few.

But as wordy as we can get, words lack depth. Perhaps a Japanese word can explain it better than me. The word is “Yugen” – a profound awareness of the universe that triggers feelings too deep and mysterious for words.

My thanks to photographer and author Rick Sammon for posting that definition.

There’s a concept I learned during my NLP (neuro linguistic programming) training. It states, “You can’t eat the menu.” The words, the pictures, the symbols, can be rather enticing, yet inedible.

Love is a feeling that you can’t describe in words. Even when you attempt to do so, it pales in comparison to the sensation labeled as love.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that there are no words that convey condolences on a deep level. Words are just not equipped to describe feelings. 

You may get a sense of how someone is feeling by their choice of words, but your words of comfort rarely go past the surface.

Reminds me of  story . . . I was attending a seminar many years ago and we were asked to go 24 hours without using words. Half of the group did it one day and the other half the next. It was my day for silence and one of the attendees who did her day of silence the day before came over to our cabin. She started chatting me up and all I could do was listen and gesture. She started telling me about a situation in her life that was causing her great emotional pain. It was a sad story.  I had no words of wisdom for her, but I stayed present with her. That means I didn’t go into my head and try and make sense of what she was saying or conjure up some remedy. I just stayed present with her. After about 15 minutes, she burst in to tears of relief, and hugged me thanked me for helping her, and said she hadn’t felt this good for a long time. I didn’t say a word.

If you want to go deeper with someone, you needn’t be silent, but it works wonders when you don’t go inside your head to formulate what you’re going to say when it’s your turn to speak. Stay with them and whatever words that eventually come out will have a deeper effect. Don’t rehearse what you’re going to say after being present with someone. Just say what comes out. You may surprise yourself and reach the other person with the depth of what you say.

There are no magic words, but you can get magical results when you stay present with someone. 

My guess is the deepest word in the English language is “presence.”

All the best,

John