I want to be speechless again
I believe that life needs more moments when words cannot possibly describe the feelings rushing through the entire body. That cannot even begin to encompass the true magnitude of the sensations.
Much of our time is used up in describing everything; how our day was, something that happened to us and how it felt. But have you ever felt something so powerful and visceral that words absolutely failed you? There was nothing accurate enough to describe it because they were not worthy to capture its splendour?
Speech is our gift from God, a connecting force that raises humans above all beings. But there’s something higher still: silence. There are rare moments when we’re so moved that to talk would be to diminish the experience.
Being a writer, or rather an aspiring one, I spend a large sum of my time describing everything that’s happening around me and to me in excruciating detail. To find the precise adjective and the perfect sentence to accurately conjure and convey the situation or the reaction. I’m constantly looking up new vocabulary to use and the thesaurus app on my laptop is always open. All in the effort to create an image in someone’s mind, for them to feel as if they were right there with me or were me. And truth be told, there is nothing more gratifying than when someone tells you that they could literally picture and feel everything that was happening from your writing.
But the other part of me, the sappy sod that loves to appreciate the beauty of the world and new experiences in silence without diminishing them with words, fights back. Hard. Often cussing me out with the very vocabulary I use to describe the beautiful things. Yes, I have internal dialogues with myself that lead to very eloquent and well-versed insults; I’m a strange person, don’t ask.
I long for the times when I could just spend hours staring at a sunset and not want to describe its colours, rays, the position of the clouds and its muted glow that slowly recedes in obsessive detail; when I could listen to an instrumental song for the first time and feel goosebumps rise on my arm and not itch to sit and write about how my soul rose in time with the violins and crashed with the drums; when I heard “I love you” from someone special without wanting to capture the soaring and fluttering of my poor heart meticulously.
I have lost the ability to be awed in silence in my mind. To admire the world and all its magnificence without ruining it by attempting to immortalise it with words. I could be struck dumb by an experience or a feeling but it would only last a few minutes. My brain would restart and then kick into overdrive, scanning the list of vocabulary words I’ve collected for just the right one.
I want to make those brief minutes last longer. I want to be able to hold on to those blissful moments of quiet in my mind just from admiration and wonderment. To simply be in the moment and enjoy it without explanation or illustration.
I want to be speechless again, my brain needs to fucking chill.
