#45 The tragedy of the spoken word

ByLukas
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Language helps us describe the world we perceive. Yet in doing so, it closes our eyes, our ears, our touch, and our heart to the parts of the world we don’t have words for.

Every language is a lens on a felt reality within and around us – both clarifying and categorizing the world, and limiting it by the words it has available.

Learning more languages gives you new lenses – and a richer sense of reality.

But just like the structure of our ears limit the sounds we can hear, and the structure of our eyes limit colors we can see, the structure of any language somehow limits our felt experience of the world.

How do we re-access memories, emotions, hidden away in a long-forgotten language?

How do we re-learn to listen to the voices of the wordless world speaking to our animal self… the voices that once upon a time, before verbal language emerged, were all we had?

there’s an eternal song
drowned out by the confines of my mother tongue
a wordless melody that once made sense
until our brain started blurring it with a lens
narrowing it down
neglecting its nuances through verbs and nouns

with all its might language wants us to abide
but the wordless world it tries to hide
will forever be inside

Lukas Van Vyve

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    #265 Dance the barbell balance of life

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    Living a balanced life doesn’t mean living average experiences.

    It’s more like a barbell, or a seesaw, where you go all in on complementary actions.

    Work hard, rest hard.

    Write with total focus, then fully let go when you’ve hit your word target.

    Work out with full intensity, then let your body fully recover.

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    Instead, you start doing less of what you’re already doing or add more of the polar opposite of what you’re already doing.

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    #185 Priorities

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    We all want to avoid doing things that make us miserable.

    Yet avoiding them often takes the shape of prioritizing them.

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    Unfortunately, it seems to be a rule that the more unpleasant tasks you cross off your to-do list, the more unpleasant tasks appear on your to-do list.

    Sometimes it makes sense to do the essential things first, even if that means you keep the unpleasant things on your to-do list.

    This is not a free pass to avoid unpleasant things and only do something you like.

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    #117 The quest for (average) ideas

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    Talking about “good and bad ideas” implies a ranking. Good, compared to what? Bad, compared to what?

    The truth is that most ideas you produce will be average – because there is no other way.

    Not all ideas can be your best idea – and if they are, they will soon be replaced by a better idea. Your previous best idea has now become average.

    Not all ideas can be your worst idea either. And if they are, they will soon be replaced by an even worse idea. Your worst idea has now become average.

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    The more ideas you have, the bigger your sample size. The more elaborate the ranking. The better the good ideas. The worse the bad ideas.

    All this to say: bad, average, and good ideas ALL stack the odds of striking gold in your favor. What matters is that you show up and generate ideas.

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