While I was in my first year of university, I had an English literature teacher who introduced us to the question of the relationship between thought and language. Can a person identify a feeling they are having if they don’t have the word for that feeling?
I don’t know how much, if any, time and energy it is worth spending trying to answer that question, but I do believe we know more than we can say.
The heart is mostly made of muscle tissues, but also contains tens of thousands of neurons. Very little is understood about the enteric nervous system beyond the fact of its existence and its basic functions. Memory and trauma are trapped in the body – in muscles and tendons and tissues, and in the vegus nerve.
Language is an amazing ability that humans have evolved. Yet, music and the other arts have the ability to bypass language and access emotional content, memory, feeling in ways that language cannot.
When we think about our relationship to story – how story works within us and how we participate in the great web of story in which we are tiny nodes – it is wise to remember that well beneath and beyond our stories is knowledge, memory, experience, trauma, and wisdom that runs oceans deep.
———————
Please consider sharing this post with someone if you found it helpful.
You can sign up to receive these posts here.