November 29, 2013

November 29, 2013

Dear reader, 

When you read these words, you should not have to worry about what they mean. They certainly mean something, but there is no need for you to make any effort to understand them. SVB is absolutely effortless, that is why you are not familiar with it. You are familiar with making a language effort, with thinking about what is said, with difficult conversations, because usually you have to figure out what the words you are surrounded by mean. These words are different, but it may take a little while before you begin to notice. Of course, these words are exactly the same as other written words, but what we are talking about here is what is communicated, what is meant by these words. 

These words communicate peace and security to you. Such words are meaningless without the non-verbal experience. Unless these words induce that experience, they are meaningless. How can a writer be sure he succeeds in inducing that experience? You think that just reading these words is proof that he is bringing his message across? This author does not believe so. Although it may be true, he believes that it is usually not true. Most of what is said does not come across. What is written reflects what is said and thus all the unresolved problems pertaining to written language are entirely the same as those pertaining to spoken language. Most of what is written, like most of what is said, does not come across. Yet, we like to think and believe that it does. 

 

The word comfort, the description of comfort and the experience of comfort, are different things. Because they can be the same, this does not mean that they are or will be the same. To verify whether they are the same, we must be confident about other words besides the word comfort. Many other words are necessary to make one word meaningful. Without the meaning of many other words this one word will have lost its meaning. Stated differently, when this one word loses its meaning, many other words will have lost their meaning too, because words depend on each other for meaning. The description is more important than one single word.

In the same way that words by themselves are totally meaningless, experiences by themselves are meaningless too. The experience of comfort is only identifiable in relation to other experiences. Discomfort and comfort go together, just as being tired and being rested go together. If one never gets enough rest, if the experience of rest is lacking, the word and the experience of being rested lose meaning. Surely, the words being tired, our description of being tired as well as our actual experience of being tired will lose its meaning. Our language loses more and more of its meaning as long as we fail to notice that our words do not really match our experiences. 

When our experiences are not accurately represented, our lives are diminished. However, when our experiences are accurately represented, our lives are enriched. These words enhance your experience, it does not matter what experience. It is the experience that you have right now.  The notion that your experience can be genuinely your experience, regardless of what experience it is, needs to be made clear to you in writing, so that it can be expressed by you as SVB in your speech.