Misunderstood Words

In the past few weeks, after finishing The Unbearable Lightness of Being, I found myself thinking about the ideas of weight and lightness. The question, “Does the one-time nature of life make our choices lighter or heavier?” seemed to approach the issue from a subtle angle. But how heavy is heavy, and how light is light?

Perhaps the issue was not only about weight or lightness. It was about how the same words can take on entirely different meanings in different minds.

A section in the book led me to write this piece: “The Dictionary of Misunderstood Words.”

There are some words we assume to be universal. Yet everything is individual. The sense of universality begins to dissolve when you look beneath the surface.

The word “cemetery” is often associated with gloom. For some, however, it brings a sense of peace.

“Love” also appears universal from the outside. But once it enters individual minds, it breaks into layers of meaning. The same word may represent trust for one person and fear for another.

This is exactly why I find myself wondering: when something leaves my mouth, does it carry the same meaning for you?

After all, communication is an attempt to meet on the same plane, but maybe we are not actually on the same ground.

All these differences in meaning take place within the mind.

I take a word from the rooms of my mind and throw it in front of you. You, in turn, perceive this word, something you have not seen, touched, or tasted, perhaps not even truly heard, only as vibrations reaching your ears.

At this point, another concept appears: Umwelt. The subjective world each of us constructs, limited by what we are able to perceive.

Communication between two people inevitably gets caught in this space. Each word exists only as far as our own umwelt allows it to.

And yet, communication feels like a kind of space travel between two worlds.

Sometimes a word reaches its destination without getting lost in the folds of the mind. But most of the time, it loses its meaning along the way.

I throw my word toward you, and you respond not to what I intended, but to what you perceive.

What remains is more than a single word: meanings never spoken and meanings spoken too much. Like two entirely foreign planets, we face one another. Each word echoes within its own boundaries, and everyone understands what they want to understand.

Perhaps this is why that “dictionary of misunderstood words” keeps growing throughout a lifetime.