Just like the many organs of the human body enable us to feel, see, hear and speak, the languages we write in, the stories we weave out of them, are given life when we use meanings and symbols to let them feel, see, hear and touch. Not everything is just words. In fact, there are a very few things that are just words – probably definitions of other words.
When you read something, when your eye passes over a sentence, when your brain understands what is being said in what context, you immediately form an image in your mind. That is when little words of four or five letters quiver with the possibility of an infinite interpretations. It is not mandatory, nor is it impossible, that a word, phrase or a sentence be interpreted in just one way. If so, everything would be so rigid, as if creativity had been subjugated to the death of imagination – as if creativity itself had ceased to exist. It would mean the eradication of signs, symbols, explorations, adventures, possibilities, myths, legends, mysteries, the eradication of fascination and wonderment! We are humans, and as humans, we are always curious. As much as we dig deep into the earth and fire rockets into the sky, it would be a sad day when we know everything there is to know. Purpose would be lost, meaning would be lost. Men and women will drop whatever they are doing: what is the necessity, after all? What happens at the end? What happens after I nail the painting into the wall? I will only be looking at it; I will not be able to into it. As much as we need to know, we don’t want to know everything. That is, indeed, a dreadful end to the quest for knowledge: the truth that you now belong in an old world, where you conquered every mystery there was left to conquer. You are king now, but a king of old men sitting by their sickles in the fields, but a king of old women who see no children in their bleak futures, but of children who fear growth itself.
And so, we have creativity, we have imagination, we have wrongs, we have mistakes. Only by weaning out a contrast between two apparently similar objects do we identify and define difference itself, and only with the emergence of a difference do we recognise progress. Change is the unit of time, time is the herald of change. If we hadn’t been able to detect change itself in the first place, time would be a futile requirement. The clock face would be a redundancy: you don’t see a changeless reality reflect the ballet of the three hands. That is why we see mistakes as the stepping stones to success – only, the proverb forgot to tell you mistakes are the the only way to success. The need for imperfection has never been so profound.
So there, I have established that meanings and interpretation are integral to civilisation.
But even in the presence of meanings, it is always up to us to interpret it right. Availability: excellent. Validity: eternal. Truth: can’t say. We have variance in variety. We have millions and millions of words floating around us in the form of speech and image, and it is up to us to understand them in such a way that the interpretation reflects our purpose in the need to understand it. Man does not simply look at the bark of a tree and launch into a list of the metaphors it brings to his mind. He will have his prejudices, his experiences that have fostered them; he will have his reasons, his dreams that have inculcated them; he will have his perceptions, his company that has required it. He will conform to something that finds logic in his beliefs. He will not so easily go against himself. If there are holes, he will plug them. He will construe in the beginning when it seems right and normal, and then he will construct in the end to make it seem so. The imperfection of the self recapitulates imperfection in the world. We cannot, at the same moment, account for all the factors affecting our decisions. We will have assumptions, some ignorances, in coming to our conclusion. Rigidity prohibits probability. If something is to stay so independent of the passage of time, it must either be extremely vulnerable to the subversive forces of nature – in which case it will soon die – or it must be unresponsive.
Take up this micro-scenario. You are reading a story wherein the author has failed to mention the time of day he is referring to. Suddenly, you come across a paragraph which seems to help you in piecing together different pieces of information to conclude that it is night time in the tale. Also, suppose that the words ‘darkness’, ‘loneliness’, ‘blind’, etc., are not mentioned anywhere. Even so, the conclusion only seems logical as to be night. That is the power of symbols: the author can choose to deliberately exclude straightforward adjectives of a phenomenon. Instead, he can choose to employ the imaginative power of the reader to build his or her own physical appearance of the scene and the characters. A good example would be Milan Kundera‘s works, which concentrated more on the mental make-up of the persons.
The need to interpret, rather than to take for granted, is only recognised by itself when exposition is limited. If the author takes time to expose everything about the scene to the reader, the reader will find it hard to from those mental images from which he or construes the message waiting to be conveyed. As much as the author’s imagination is exploding with newer and newer concoctions, he must limit himself to what is really necessary.
- If quoting fact A suffices that fact B follows, then fact B is redundant if printed.
- If fact A may or may not imply fact B, then fact C can be mentioned to corroborate that it is, fact B that is being spoken about.
- If fact A and fact B are both mentioned, fact C can be left up to the reader’s imagination.
But each meaning must exist independently – it can not depend on the other meanings. If a word is interpreted in one way, then the implications must be unchanging. The study of semiotics, for example, sometimes deals with the interchangeability of symbols, and how two symbols at the same time can yield one meaning. However, two meanings cannot lead the interpreter to the same symbol.
Anyway, I have narrowed down the plausibility of probabilities to the constraining of exposition. But, even then, there is a personal remaining to be made: whether to interpret, or not to interpret. This is a very foggy subject for me. In trying to quantify perception and understanding through the definition of cognition and recognising, I now find myself limited by an anticipation. Something tells me I am on virgin territory, fresh land, something new and unexplored! Where do meanings themselves stem from? When we know we have to interpret a riddle in order to understand its implication, why do we take for granted that there will be mystery waiting to be uncloaked? How do words give birth to ideas? Simply put, even if I were to be an expert on a matter, why do I inherently know that there will always be something unknown to me lurking in the corners of it?
If that was my black cloud, this is my silver lining: the thought does not shatter belief. It evokes curiosity and fosters self-inspiration.
Clathration Therapy 