Well, this post is about sayings and things said and unsaid. I sometimes wonder at the phenomenon called mind. You never know what it thinks and what it says and what it is afraid of and why it is afraid of it. I never payed much attention to it but the other day a word or two made me to brood over it.
A friend of mine asked me to say something and I quoted Robert Frost without realizing it "half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it." meaning to divert the topic to another direction as I usually do. But then she asked, “In which half do you fall?”
I thought of it and answered with unnecessary words meaning to tire her out with words like I usually do, saying “I say things that I don’t have in order to hide the things I really want to say because I can’t say them. So I think I fall in both halves.”
Later on I was thinking back on the talk we had after that. Somehow my thoughts wandered into different channels and I found myself thinking about the things not said and those which I am afraid to say and why I am actually afraid to say them. I know of at least one other person who will understand this because he is as bad at saying as I am. Straight answers are hard to come by when talking to us.
The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.
A friend of mine asked me to say something and I quoted Robert Frost without realizing it "half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it." meaning to divert the topic to another direction as I usually do. But then she asked, “In which half do you fall?”
I thought of it and answered with unnecessary words meaning to tire her out with words like I usually do, saying “I say things that I don’t have in order to hide the things I really want to say because I can’t say them. So I think I fall in both halves.”
Later on I was thinking back on the talk we had after that. Somehow my thoughts wandered into different channels and I found myself thinking about the things not said and those which I am afraid to say and why I am actually afraid to say them. I know of at least one other person who will understand this because he is as bad at saying as I am. Straight answers are hard to come by when talking to us.
The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.
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