What I Really Want to Say I Can't Define

House is quiet. Morning. Not making the mistake of turning on the television again today. Maybe later. Maybe not.

Let’s see how this goes. I need to write. Write write write write write fuck it just write and I am having trouble with the typing today although autocorrect has taken care of almost all of it for me and that is lovely too much automation maybe maybe not.

Been talking to Manny’s friend Adam a lot lately because I hang out with Manny all the time and he hangs out with Adam, and anyway we’ve been having the same conversation it seems in different ways. Maybe that’s just the linguist in me: maybe Adam sees them as very separate and distinct conversations, but to me they have all been about the same thing and that is the search for meaning and whether or not searching for meaning is the same thing as searching for god. It’s a difficult conversation for the two of us to have because we disagree on two fundamental levels – first of all, Adam tells me that my trying to make meaning of the world is strictly a spiritual (he uses the word ‘religious’) enterprise. 

I tell him that business is his religion.

He doesn’t like the statement and I can tell he doesn’t like the statement so I start to back off a bit. Then I remember that I taught students like him new ways of thinking in my comp classes. Even the ones who thought I was an idiot.

I got this.

I am the authority in my subject; Adam is a dabbler. I wouldn’t try to lecture him on economic theory. Okay, I would. But only insomuch as most economic theory is only a piecing together of sociological, or political or psychological theory and is therefore nothing more than the study of humanity for economic gain. I think he’d tell me that’s a reductionist argument, and I would agree, but again – diametrically opposite levels – I wouldn’t view that as an inherently bad thing. Mostly, I think, because I am willing and able to understand both the complexities and simplicities of a thought. That makes not a bit of sense.

I lost track of the thought.

So clearly, the statement was false or at the very least incomplete as if to say I can understand the thoughts, I just don’t have the language to express them, which is an argument many linguists and philosophers discuss often – are we able to have a thought if we do not have the language to express it. It’s the other thing I think Adam and I disagree on, whether or not meaning is made or found, or both. It’s a discussion of a priori knowledge. In other words, do we find meaning first or language first? If we find meaning first, is our expression of it limited by the language available to us and if so, is the knowledge consequently corrupted? And if it is the reverse, if we can find no meaning without the language to understand it, is our knowledge constricted by the language we already possess?

These are questions that keep me up at night. Keep me thinking. All the time processing the world around me – from the inane television commercial that suddenly raised the room’s volume by fifteen decibals to the squirrel that peeks out at me from behind the big oak each morning when I walk. These are important questions to me. To a lot of people, I think. More people than realize it. More people than will ever even consider the questions. But I have. And I can contribute to the conversation. And I think I have a lot to share.

So why should I be spending my thinking time trying to solve problems other people are perfectly capable of and content in figuring out?

I know how that sounds and I really don’t care anymore. It feels good. I used to not care and I don’t know exactly how I let all that doubt creep back in again, but I’m seeing more of it each day and remembering the intelligent, articulate, educated woman who doesn’t understand why the uninformed, inarticulate, uneducated people about me believe I am the one who is wrong, just because we don’t think alike.