Shaped Words

Words and thoughts and feelings can be illustrated by the toys made for babies that are shaped like balls and have various shapes in the surface to put matching shapes inside the ball.

In my imagination of this illustration, the ball is very large and represents the inside of our soul, what we feel, perceive, believe, experience etc. The pieces that fit into the holes are words that we utilize to transfer what is inside of our ball to another person's ball. The holes are the outlets through which we squeeze our thoughts and ideas into a certain form that hopefully will be recognizable and relevant to the other person so that when they take it in through a similarly shaped hole and expand it and reassemble the sequence of words inside their own ball, they will have an approximation of the original thought or feeling we are trying to convey to them.

Our actions are likewise condensed representations of our intents and desires, but for this time I want to focus primarily on words.

In addition to a multitude of shapes, the communication pieces are also coded by color that is supposed to match the shapes. For instance, let's say that blue is supposed to always be associated with circle, green with square and yellow with triangle. This added dimension allows us to have deeper meaning, more definition and usefulness for words so that they will more closely match the meaning and accuracy of the sender. Our language and culture, our upbringing and our experiences largely determine the encoding process that teaches our brain the complex library of definitions and associations necessary for truthful communication.

However, this complex system is nowhere sufficient for really conveying the immense size and complexity of the original thought or feeling to be reproduced accurately as the same thought or feeling in another mind. There is always a certain amount of error in the transfer process and very often much more than we suspect. To further complicate this, the attitudes, disposition, biases and emotions of the receiver add their own strong flavor to the reassembly of the words inside the mind and sometimes seriously undermine the integrity of the message intended by the sender. Considering all the pitfalls and hazards and risks involved that are much more than here touched on, it is really amazing that we can communicate as effectively as we do.

What happens, though, when there is deliberate tampering with the code itself? What about improper or abusive distortion that created a rearranged and confused library that consistently interprets certain messages in a way vastly different than what was sent? We all tend to believe that our own library is more accurate than others because it is all we know. But what happens when we refuse to update our library and our pride demands that our spin on the words coming in is the only correct interpretation? What too, about differing levels of maturity that have an affect on our ability to comprehend concepts or our ability to have a large enough context to not jump to false assumptions?

You can begin to see potential for catastrophic problems when the shapes on one ball are colored with a very different color than on the other ball. The code is mixed up and the message gets hopelessly twisted either in the sender or the receiver. This is a very common occurrence and lies beneath much of our interpersonal conflict and pain. One person sends out a yellow square and the other person takes it in through a green square hole. Who is right? The first person is using improper coding but believes they are right because they have always used yellow for squares – their parents and upbringing conditioned them to do so. They may get very upset when the receiver is confused or seems to misinterpret the intended message and is charged with being devious when in actuality it was the senders faulty coding that created the conflict. Very many of us, if not all of us, need a lot of repainting and refining of our outlets and inlets to better synchronize and bond with each other.

I see the inside of our ball – our mind and heart and soul – as filled with all kinds of material, maybe raw material or partially assembled material of all sorts. These are ideas, many times only partially finished. They are emotions, sometimes like intense gases, that are always impossible to accurately squeeze through the tiny holes of words but containing very great pressure that forces them to seek outlet anyway. They are beliefs that are more substantive and defined but not necessarily as strong as we think they are until a crisis comes to reveal what they are really made of. There are theories and propositions laying around waiting to be assembled, scrapped or rearranged to make more sense before being ready to export.

All of these things are moving around like in a biosphere sometimes very active like storms or sometimes very peaceful like a quiet river. When we want to connect with others and share what is inside, these things head for the inside surface of the ball to find a way out through the means of shaped and colored words to be delivered to the other person. A great deal of condensing has to take place on the way out because words are so small compared to the size of the originals. That is one reason we have to use many words in our attempt to parse our ideas into deliverable format in hopes that the other person will know how to reassemble them all somewhat accurately and maybe have enough of the right context to grasp a little bit of the flavor of what we want them to understand about us.

Because the words are such small parts of the original and have to squeeze through the little coded holes both leaving us and entering the other person, there is always great loss from the original content. In addition, the words are somewhat dehydrated versions that have had much of the “liquid” extracted from them before delivery and the receiver has to “reconstitute” our words, along with all the other communications they are receiving, with their own “liquid” to rehydrate the message to make sense of it. This adds another dimension for confusion and misunderstanding but can also create a lot of variety and flavor for life.

Now add to that the problem so pervasive today of meaningless words. The more a person abuses their words and fails to be transparently truthful, the smaller in value the words become. That means that one necessarily has to use even more words to convey the same message than they could otherwise and so their words continue to have to be multiplied as they become weaker and weaker.

Some of us find ourselves compelled to use more and more expletives in our attempt to express ourselves with less and less satisfaction that we are being heard. Expletives, cursing and vulgarity become an addiction in our attempt to be heard and understood but leave us more and more dissatisfied and frustrated. Similarly, we may become loud or boisterous, angry or whiny or any number of other means to try to get out what is building up so much pressure inside. But the more we abuse our words the smaller and more useless they become to us starving us from the very interaction that we need to bond and thrive and feel satisfaction. These problems are a disease that is like cancer eating away at all of our relationships.

When words are full of meaning and mean exactly what they say and nothing more or less, they are like the toy objects that fit perfectly into the holes on the balls. When they slide through the hole with almost no room to spare there is a certain sense of satisfaction and synchronization that takes place in our minds. However, when the objects shrink smaller and smaller, that sense of satisfaction is lost because the words no longer fit nicely; they just fall through the holes and the whole point of playing the game is lost.

As our ability to communicate is limited by these problems all of the material inside our heads becomes very difficult to share. As a result there is an increase in isolation and loneliness. This is the opposite of joy which is a free-flowing interaction between two minds and hearts that share many common feelings and stimulate each other to more creativity and satisfaction.

Another major problem with words used without meaning is that not only do others come to doubt what we say but we ourselves come to disbelieve at our heart level what we hear ourselves say. As a result, our promises to ourselves and our resolutions to do something or change something become weaker and weaker and we find ourselves slaves to whatever feelings or impulses that may come along. In addition we will find that God does not believe our words either no matter how good they sound or how well they are delivered. We may have the most inspiring praise and worship times together with other people and say the most wonderful and pious-sounding insights, but if in our daily life we use words loosely, carelessly and without integrity then God will not accept anything we offer Him. (see Malachi 2:13-17)

What can we do if we find ourselves slipping into this trap? First we need to recognize what we are doing and have some sense of what it is costing us in strained relationships and pain that we are causing others. Then we need to ask God for a spirit of repentance and turn away from our habits of loose and careless words. As I have become aware of these issues I have begun to analyze some of the things I say and check myself more often to be aware of when I use words with diminished meaning. Since using words at full force means that one can use far less of them, I pick up clues as to where I am in this area when I catch myself having to use far too many words to convey something very simple. If I find that people often don't believe me I wonder what lies behind that problem. Of course, it sometimes is not because I am not telling the truth but is because the other person is not using words carefully and so they also discount much of what everyone else is saying.

What is very interesting is that God never has this problem. When He uses words He fully means what He says and whatever He says is always true. The reason we have such a difficult time believing God is not because He cannot be trusted but because we cannot be trusted and we project that onto other's words.

For two minds to bond in love they have to come to some level of accurate and reliable level of using words with each other or the relationship is undermined. If one person is telling the truth but the other is living in fear and fails to be open and honest then the relationship is fatally flawed. Often the honest person is the one blamed for the resulting problems even though the fearful one originated the cause. Fear and deceit are like termites that eat away at our lives and leave us crumbling while we point the finger at those around us and blame them for all of our pain.

To have healthy, growing relationships that help us mature and thrive we need to practice honesty in our speech and think much more carefully about our own relationship with our words. I believe everyone has some failures in this area but today it is reaching epidemic proportions. God is drawing us back to live in community with other believers in simplicity of speech and openness of heart. This is the only safe environment in which we can thrive and grow.