On the Inadequacy of Words
If there is one faculty upon which humans preen themselves most proudly, it is their gift of language. Yet, it is this very gift that most betrays them when they aim to grasp the sublime, the profound, the essence of what lies deepest within the soul. Words are the brittle vessels with which we attempt to carry the ocean—porous, fragile, and soon emptied of their intended cargo. They serve us well enough in the marketplace, in matters of trade, or in recounting the dull mechanics of daily life. But summon them to the tribunal of the heart, and behold how poorly they fare.
Consider the lover, ablaze with passion’s fever. What tongue, however nimble, can stretch itself to the measure of that ecstasy? We borrow metaphors, piling simile upon simile as if quantity might compensate for quality. We liken love to fire, with its consuming heat and transformative power; to storms, with their unpredictable fury and overwhelming force; to music, with its harmonious beauty and ability to evoke deep emotions; to madness, with its irrationality and disregard for conventional boundaries—but is Love any of these? These comparisons are shadows cast upon a wall, gestures toward something that refuses to sit still long enough to be named. The poets, with all their eloquence, hold up a polished mirror and show us through a glass, darkly, only the dim reflection, not the face itself.
Love, in its purest form, defies definition and categorization. It is a force that transcends language and reason, a mystery that can be experienced but not fully explained. It is a feeling that can be felt in the heart but not fully grasped by the mind. It is a reality that can be lived but not fully captured in words.
And what of the mystics, that tireless voyager who sails the uncharted seas beyond sense and reason? Their craft is even more desperate. For they seek not to describe a passion of the flesh but to translate a language that lives further than the sky into the mutterings found in the mud. How does one encase infinity in syllables? What sound does eternity make that can be echoed by mortals? The mystic’s speech inevitably buckles and fractures, collapses under the weight of its own ambition, tumbling into riddles, contradictions, oxymorons—I am and I am not, the darkness is brighter than light—a testament to the inadequacy of human expression in the face of the divine, a contortionist’s attempt to illuminate that which lies beyond the reach of human comprehension. They would speak of the unspeakable, and in so doing reminds us only of how much cannot be said.The mystic’s journey is fraught with even greater peril than that of the artist or the lover. While they grapple with the tangible, the mystic endeavors to convey the One, the Absolute, using the limited tools of human language.
This is a task that defies the very nature of language, which is inherently bound to the concrete. In our search for words to serve our purpose we too often lose our purpose in the service of words.
Now consider grief—that silent tyrant. Where is the vocabulary that can encompass the jagged landscape of loss? Our lexicon is rich in words for measured things: ounces, miles, minutes. But what scale can weigh absence? What clock can mark the timeless ache of missing someone who once filled every corner of our being? We try, of course. We say, I am heartbroken, as if the heart were glass and grief a stone. But grief is not a single break; it is a shattering, a fracturing into countless shards, some too small to ever be gathered again.
Grief is not content with the confines of language, for language seeks precision, and grief thrives in the wild, sprawling chaos where meaning dissolves. It is not an event but a state of being, not a chapter in our story but the ink that smudges the margins. Some would endeavor to chart its course with stages and phases, but grief mocks such attempts. It is unruly, anarchic, shifting like a river that carves new paths when the old ones no longer suffice. It waxes and wanes with a rhythm known only to itself, ebbing softly one moment and surging like a tempest the next. Grief strips us bare, reducing us to our most vulnerable selves, confronting us with the fragility of existence and the illusion of permanence. It is not simply the absence of what was lost, but the echo of that presence, a resonance that refuses to be silenced. Grief is both a void and the shape of what was once filled. We do not know how to be silent about it and yet no words will come.
Strangely, it is only when grief begins to loosen its grip, when its raw edge dulls into scar, that we find our voices again. Words return, tentative and humble, shaped by the very wounds they seek to express. We do not speak of grief from outside it, as one might describe a landscape seen from a hilltop. No, we speak through grief, and in that trembling articulation, language gains a new gravity, weighted with what it cannot fully contain. Were they to be known only by language we would find no difference between joy and grief save for the rattling wheeze in my throat.
Paradoxically, it is in this very failure—this inadequacy of words—that we find a strange, stubborn beauty. For though words cannot capture grief, they become repositories for it, not by their precision but by their earnestness. We become the lover, the poet, the mystic, reaching for metaphors, reaching ever upward, beyond the heavens to silence even, and in these gestures, however futile, we find companionship in our desolation. It is not the perfection of expression but the courage to express that binds us to one another. It is not in the delivery of impeccable prose, but in the striving itself, that we touch the shared thread of our common humanity.
Considering the inadequacy of language, it would be a folly to expect from authentic expression the comforts of consistency in style, the rigor of logical arguments, or even the ease of relatability. Whether in grief, love, awe, or despair, verisimilitude speaks in fragments, in contradictions, in echoes that refuse to align neatly with one another. It is not a discourse designed for coherence but an outpouring shaped by the rawness of emotion, where clarity often gives way to the blur of feeling. The language of joy can be as disjointed as the language of sorrow, filled with sudden leaps, tangled metaphors, and bursts of silence where words simply cannot go. Authentic expression mirrors the disarray of the heart and the mind, embracing its jagged edges without apology, for to smooth them would be to betray the truth they carry. It is in these imperfect utterances, these raw disclosures, that we find the genuine pulse of human experience, unpolished and therefore undeniably real.
But even then—even then—words remain what they always were: signs pointing toward the thing, not the thing itself; words are our attempt to catch lightning in a bottle and they will always, ultimately, fail us. They are as fleeting as butterflies, as elusive as the morning mist. We chase them with nets of logic and cages of grammar, but they resist our efforts, slipping always just beyond reach. They are, at best, approximations—maps drawn by a trembling hand, attempting to chart the unchartable terrain of the heart.
Yet, for all their inadequacy, we persist. Why? Perhaps because to speak, to write, to grope for words in the dark is not merely an act of communication but of connection. It is our frail rebellion against isolation, our refusal to let silence have the last word. In this struggle—vain though it may be—we find a strange solace. And so, we persist. We write, we speak, we reach for words that will never be enough, knowing they will fail us, but also knowing that in their very failing, they do something profound. They hold space for the ineffable. They stand as fragile monuments to love, loss, and the human need to make meaning even when meaning slips through our fingers like water. In the end, perhaps that is enough.
Thus, language fails us—and yet, in failing, it serves us best. For in its very imperfection, it mirrors the human soul: incomplete, reaching, broken perhaps, but always reaching.
The Grieviary 