Beyond Words

People often resort to the conceptual cliché that a situation is beyond words when they cannot express it. This commonly manifests with the “my love for you is beyond words” banality. I always used to think this alluded to some near-heavenly ideal, like the experience equaled that of entering heaven or some other over-the-top event that transcends the typical moment. Now I think otherwise.

When I really feel passion for a person, activity, or idea it isn’t that I commune with something above our ability to use words, but rather something below. Such moments strike a primal aspect of existence, a part of us that exists without language, namely our so-called animal nature. We use language to build upon our ability to navigate reality. Speech and writing enable us to invent technology, share information, and reach potential we could not reach without out ability to share complex thoughts. At the same time words are what we use to interpret reality as perceived through our bodies. With time and effort we learn to better express how we believe our biological systems function, whether our attempts apply to emotions, thoughts, physical parts, or how the three intertwine.

When words fail us it is sometimes because we do not know how to use them to express a biological stimulus or response, similar to how we often find it difficult to describe the color blue, the taste of a mushroom (and then to further describe the tastes of the labels we unearth for the mushroom), an abnormal fright of frogs, the way we glow when Laura or Vince notices us as we pass and shows a smile that beckons more than it greets, and other internal responses to things that please, intimidate, or worry us. During such moments we do not commune with God, but rather the part of ourselves that we often forget, the part of us that exists without language, the part that most animals primarily dwell in. When we feel love we feel how an animal feels love, whether the animal is a pig, cow, dog, or mouse, and similarly when we fear for our lives, this same non-verbal terror afflicts animals.

For this alone I could refuse to consume flesh.