Language and The Enormity of Experience

When I tried to gather my thoughts to answer this question, I paused several times recalling the time when I had a hard time to explain my experiences. Then, I came to realize that there were not many times that I succeeded in converting the ideas in my mind about the experience into actual language. In most cases, I failed to do so. Then, I started thinking about what are the reasons behind it. Also, I am interested in to what extent this happens to other people.

Personally, I think that it is quite difficult to describe something visually in terms of a language. There was an experience that I was asked by my mother to describe the painting I saw at a museum. When I saw the painting, what I saw was a feeling. I saw the painting, and I just felt it. It was not something like “it portrays the beauty of nature” or “ it portrays the human misery” It was all about feelings. There were so many things that I could not explain in words, because by seeing the painting I experienced so many emotions tangled up which simultaneously converted into one form of an unexplainable feeling. It is possible that some people could explain this better than me due to their experience with art. However, I believe that there is a limit in language to describe experiences in details. Especially when the experience involves a feeling, I would say that language most likely fails to capture the complexities of that unique experience.

While the kind of experience I stated above is very difficult to describe in words, there are some experiences that you can easily interpret in words. Nevertheless, I often fail to do so in both cases. At least for me, one of the reasons why I often end up failing to capture the enormity of experience is attributed to my bad linguistic skills. This has been true for me for so many years even in my mother language, Japanese. I assume that this is because I was less exposed to reading books from a young age simply because I did not like it. Therefore, when I want to verbalize what I experience or what I felt, I face the difficulties of explaining it in words. I easily get frustrated when I cannot come up with perfect words that I am looking for in order to represent my emotional orientation or physical experience. Then, what I always think is that people with enriched linguistic skills might not have the same problems as I have. There is no end in learning a language, and this is true even if it is your mother language. I believe that language can be improved or cultivated through practices just like playing an instrument. Some people can play a violin professionally where some only can play it as a novice. What I want to say here is one’s ability to describe the complexities of the experience in language inherently depends on the practices one had in language. However, even after gaining great linguistic skills, it is still difficult or impossible for language to capture the enormity of experience.

I believe that only practicing a language cannot make one fully capable of expressing their experiences. I believe that fully developed logical thinking and cognitive processes are indispensable for one to achieve the purpose of expressing the complexities of experience in language. When we want to perfectly describe our experiences in language, we think about where we should begin to talk, where we should emphasis on, which part of your story is most important, which words we should put to explain and what is the most effective way to express it. When you verbalize or write your experience, you are going through these processes in your mind naturally and intuitively. These are just examples, so there should be more things to be pointed out. Nevertheless, these things are just crossing your head. I assume that a person who can do this process very quickly and effectively maintaining their logical thinking could be the one who is relatively better in describing the complexities of experience in language.

I do not say that language fully captures the complexities of experiences because the experiences we have are too complicated to describe in words. Describing what you experienced by listening music, watching opera or seeing a painting could be the example for this explanation. I suggested some of my ideas that possibly can improve people’s ability in describing the enormity of experience in words. However, I sill put emphasis on the fact that there is always limits to achieve it.