A Profundity of Words

The development of language represents one of the key elements in humankind's rapid progression as a species. While other beings are able to communicate -- often in complex ways -- language has allowed people to vastly expand knowledge, establish social contracts (i.e., government) and develop far flung economic systems. In addition, via the arts, language has allowed people to conjure up imagery through the writer or poet's pen.

Yet, for all the benefits language has bestowed on human society, it still has many drawbacks. For one, hundreds of different languages and/or dialects have sprung forth and, sometimes, people from the same geographical area find that they don't understand the words of their neighbors.

For another, though we possess massive dictionaries and rules of usage, words are a very personal thing. Often, nuance plays a large role in the understanding of specific words and what a word means to me may be altogether different from what the same word means to you. Some words are exceedingly vague like big or small. In order to understand the use of these words, we must understand them in context even when the context is missing or the context exists solely in the author's head.

The biggest drawback to the use of language and words, however, is that we humans sometimes attempt to use them to describe the indescribable. We get so egotistically caught up in our ability to communicate that we try to communicate things we don't understand or we begin to mistake the words themselves for the thing we're unsuccessfully trying to describe.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
~ from One, of the Tao Te Ching ~

The ultimate source of life (Tao, Jehovah, Allah, God, etc.) is a process or entity so broad and all encompassing that none of us understands it or even a fraction of it. Anything we can say or write about it is feeble in comparison to it.

Throughout the eons people have tried to describe it by giving it human characteristics and emotions. We've been told what it likes and dislikes. What it will tolerate and not tolerate.

Far too many people have taken these farcical descriptions to be the thing itself. IT, thereby, becomes nothing more than a strange amalgamation of words -- words that people will kill and die for.

I can write volumes about Tao, but my words are not Tao itself. Tao is beyond my limited comprehension and anything I say about it is minuscule in comparison to it. All I can do is barely scratch the surface.