I once believed that a dictionary (consider literal words) was a graveyard for words, a place where language went to die. But as you know, change is inevitable, and one grows by correcting oneself. As we move up in life, we construct, deconstruct and reconstruct, and in doing so, we keep moving forward. Through this process, I realized that words are not dead; they just evolve as we do, almost as if they, too, are alive.
In literature, it is commonly believed that a poem can hold an entire universe within itself. Isn’t it correct? And when one look closely into it, that universe, too, is made of ordinary words. This alone shows that words, no matter how simple they appear, can carry entire philosophies inside them.
Emotionless Emotions
The modern human lives in a strange age. Not only big thoughts have — great thinkers, poets and philosophers — become rare, but we ourselves have lost the vocabulary to understand our own emotions. Our language today is shaped largely by the market: by buying and selling. As Rousseau said, “It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living”.
In this contemporary world, one knows countless names for brands, jewelry, watches, cars and food — just name anything. But when it comes to feelings, our vocabulary is painfully restricted. All one can think of is: happiness, sadness, loss, shock, profit, victory. Alas! For many people, this is the entire emotional dictionary.
Take sadness, as an example. We treat it as the opposite of happiness, as if it were merely a mechanical (human body's) failure of the “happy system”. Yet its original root carries the meaning of being “whole” or “complete”. It meanss that tears do not always come from pain; they appear when something inside us becomes full, sometimes with grief, sometimes with joy.
Our fast-paced lives, however, reduce sadness to a simple complaint, “I did not get what I wanted, so I am sad”. In doing so, we shrink our emotional world into bite-sized labels, without even realizing.
Take another example, let’s say, we had only two words for color, how would we truly see the rainbow around us? The same is true for emotions. Without words, our inner life remains dull and dim.
Ahmad Javed Sahib once expressed that modern children watch horror movies without fear, not because they are brave, but because they lack the emotional space to feel fear. Their inner world of emotions is shrinking. They recognize brand names (games mostly) more easily than emotional stages. Stages such as affection, love, passion, longing or the deeper forms of loss and joy are lost.
If we wish to expand life, we must first expand language.
Words are just like maps. They reveal space inside us that we never enter simply because we do not know what to name them. Our inner universe is alive, but we neglect it because we reserve most of our vocabulary for the outer world, not the inner one.
Some beautiful words from 'The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows' reveal just how much we are missing:
Kenopsia: the haunting feeling of an empty place that was once full of life, such as returning to Grandma’s house after years.
Nostalgion: the quiet shock of realizing that your life is no longer the one you once imagined.
Trueloving: the heavy yet beautiful feeling of carrying a deep truth inside you that you are not yet ready to share.
Panthkick: the sudden inner jolt that tells you it is time to change your life.
These words remind us that emotions are not simple; they are deep yet alive. Tears are not signs of weakness; they are signs of fullness. The moment we expand our vocabulary; we expand our life.
Perhaps the real problem of the modern age is not the absence of great people, but the absence of great words to understand ourselves.
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Peace 🕊
