How can you describe the taste of chocolate to someone who has never eaten it? You can try, but what you say won’t mean much to that person until that person actually tastes chocolate. For someone who has never had it, descriptions alone cannot truly convey what chocolate really tastes like.
How does one describe the experience of climbing to the summit of the Himalayas? First, they must complete the journey and survive to return. The words they use when describing it are born from their own experience. The hardships, the scenery, the sensations, the sounds, the thoughts throughout the journey are recorded by the brain and then translated into language that they feel is appropriate.
When reading a description of such experience, we can only imagine a small part of what actually happened to that person. That is because those words are not tied to our own direct experience. In other words, the same words can carry different meanings for different people. Only those who have gone through similar circumstances and experiences can grasp the full depth behind those words. When reading a description, someone who has also returned from the Himalayas will recognize the reality behind the words that represent it.
Language is an effective tool for communication, but it has its limits in certain matters. For tangible, common issues in society where people share the context and have had direct exposure, language is the easiest way to communicate. But for intangible matters, especially those rooted in personal experience, words often cannot fully convey the speaker’s meaning to the listener or the writer’s meaning to the reader. This is particularly true for inner experiences involving thoughts, emotions, and desires—things that occur within the mind, which can only be directly observed by the individual themselves when they look inward. In this realm, words may bring more difficulty than benefit.
What often happens when someone wants to understand their inner world is that they begin by seeking knowledge from external sources. At the beginning, having no knowledge of their own, they are more likely to absorb whatever they encounter and consider it true. Later, when speaking about the topic, they simply repeat what they have learned. Regardless of whether that knowledge is true or not, the lack of direct observation and experience of the inner world leads them into a situation where they can comment on the issue but do not truly understand it. The words they use to explain the inner world do not come from their own observation but from others’ descriptions. The words we remember about inner matters are like the words we read about climbing the Himalayas, containing fragments of meaning but not revealing the reality behind the words.
Memorizing many explanations or psychological theories about humans does little to help someone understand themselves if they have never sat down and observed what is happening in their own mind. Recognizing the anger arise within us, noticing the thoughts related to that anger, seeing what we desire behind that anger, this helps us understand anger more than reading or listening about it. Once we truly understand anger, we no longer need to depend on what others say about it, because we have directly observed the issue.
The same applies to what is written here. Someone may have experienced this issue but has not yet explored it deeply or paid much attention to it. The words here may offer little more than suggesting that such an issue might exist. To truly understand it, one must directly observe more closely the words they use when thinking about their inner world. Do we truly see what is happening within, or do we merely use borrowed words to explain it? Only by seeing the reality behind the words can we understand the difference. One will see beyond the limits of words when understanding becomes more important than being able to say that one knows the answer.