Can language capture the enormity of experience?

Personally, I don’t believe that language is able to do this. The enormity of experience is beyond words and can often be indescribable. The closest that language can get to allowing someone to understand another person’s experience is when they have experienced a similar situation or emotion and can draw from their own lives in an effort to understand what is going on in the other person’s life. This, however, will never be precise.

Each person’s experiences are as unique as snowflakes. Even two people who go through the same encounter will take different things away from it, will feel different emotions about it (even if they are only slightly different), and will recall different things about it in memory. Each person brings his or her own previous experiences, knowledge, biases, and emotions to a situation and therefore goes through the experience uniquely. It is because of this, that no two people can ENTIRELY understand the experience of another person (although they may think that they do.)

Even words themselves are not precise and often have several meanings or connotations, and can be interpreted differently by different people. This variation can distort the true meaning of the experience to an even greater extent.

An example of the variation that language can have, though it may seem to be on a fairly superficial level, is in the French saying, “Je t’aime.” This phrase equates to both, “I love you” and “I like you,” in English. Picture a scale from 1-100, where “I love you” in on the extreme 100 end and “I like you” is on the extreme 1 end. There are MANY different levels of affection between these two statements—infinitely many one might say. How can all of these different levels be simply wrapped into just two (as we’ve done in English) or into one (as in French)?

Along those same lines, how can the emotion of love be wrapped up into one word? This silly four-letter word cannot possibly capture the enormity of the emotion and experience of what love really is. Those who are truly in love often describe the saying “I love you” as being extremely inadequate in describing the extent of their feelings.

Just look at how many great writers have tried to capture the experience of love, through language. It is like the holy grail of writing achievements. Many authors have gotten close, but they were held back from the start because of the limitations of language itself.

Please don't mistake me, however, in thinking that no one should try to capture experience through language, for it is this quest, in fact, that makes writing such an art.