Saturday, October 13, 2012

Snow feelings

There are certain feelings that are very hard to translate or explain to someone who has never felt them. Such as the feeling that there's a snowfall just about to begin or in progress. It's a very specific feeling, and thus very hard to explain to those who don't live in snowy regions and for that reason isn't attuned to the snowier feelings.

I'm feeling it right now, that sense of half-expecting, half taking for granted that there will be snow when I look out the window. Even if I know that there probably won't be snow in another couple of weeks time.

This feeling always happens this time of year. Snow or no snow.

Life is full of these kinds of feelings. Moods. Sensations. They are very hard to explain or convey, yet very present in the lives and loves of just about everyone. And every attempt to describe them will undoubtedly fall short in some way.

This is not a reason for not trying. On the contrary, it is all the more reason for trying that much harder. To walk that extra discursive mile and explain what it is to have snow feelings.

There's no need to limit our range of discursively available feelings, moods, sentiments to those who happen to have words attached to them. There's not that many of them, after all. And there's too many other feelings going around and about being relevant to shove them off into the category of "ambivalent" or "other".

The world is made of language. So let's expand our world, shall we?

1 comment:

  1. One of the reasons for people believing Buddhism in general an Zen in particular is very "deep", "difficult" etc. is that Buddhists have tried to put words to something that is not easily explained to people who have not shared the experience.

    I haven't had that particular experience, but as I understand it, there is no magic or difficult philosophy involved. It's just an experience. A profound one, for sure, but at the same time simple and straightforward. Just very hard to explain, much the way "yellow" is hard to explain to someone who was born blind.

    Did I say that your text is åsm? Your text is åsm!

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