See, we think we can communicate, that we can talk, and spend time and really get to know other people. Maybe we can, to a degree, but it is necessarily imperfect. As in Zeno's Paradox, we approach communication but never arrive. In the words of a high school math teacher, though, we get close enough to do business!

From The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera:

"The bowler hat was a motif in the musical composition that was Sabina's life. It returned again and again, each time with a different meaning, and all the meanings flowed through the bowler hat like water through a riverbed. I might call it Heraclitus' ("You can't step twice into the same river") riverbed: the bowler hat was a bed through which each time Sabina saw another river flow, another semantic river: each time the same object would give rise to a new meaning, though all former meanings would resonate (like an echo, like a parade of echoes) together with the new one. Each new experience would resound, each time enriching the harmony. The reason why Tomas and Sabina were touched by the sight of the bowler hat in a Zurich hotel and made love almost in tears was that its black presence was not merely a reminder of their love games but also a momento of Sabina's father and of her grandfather, who lived in a century without airplanes and cars.

"Now, perhaps, we are in a better position to understand the abyss separating Sabina and Franz: he listened eagerly to the story of her life and she was equally eager to hear the story of his, but although they had a clear understanding of the logical meaning of the words they exchanged, they failed to hear the semantic susurrus of the river flowing through them.

"And so when she put on the bowler hat in his presence, Franz felt uncomfortable, as if someone had spoken to him in a language he did not know. It was neither obscene nor sentimental, merely an incomprehensible gesture. What made him feel uncomfortable was its very lack of meaning.... If I were to make a record of all Sabina and Franz's conversations, I could compile a long lexicon of their misunderstandings" (pp 88-89).

From Tales of Love by Julia Kristeva

It isn't the denotation but the connotation that gets in the way. What symbols does a thing connote? What images does the word "love" connote? The connotation and images depend on who you ask, and when, and where, and who you are to that person, and who you have been, and... Some people think that can be overcome, and this is, I'd say, "our vulnerable hall of mirrors". But how long can the "lexicon of...misunderstandings" be before it bears too heavily? "What does he understand me to be saying? What do I understand him to be saying? Everything? -- as one tends to believe in these moments of merging apotheoses, as total as they are unspeakable? Or nothing?"

Back to words, words and more words

Read between the lines

words are another dimension of silence