Translator: Joanna Pietrulewicz Reviewer: Krystian Aparta
Thanks for sticking around,
thanks for having a big red X burned into your eyeballs
for the next three days.
(Laughter)
Today I want to talk about the meaning of words,
how we define them
and how they, almost as revenge,
define us.
The English language is a magnificent sponge.
I love the English language. I'm glad that I speak it.
I think you are all lucky to speak it, as well.
But for all that, it has a lot of holes.
In Greek, there's a word, "lachesism"
which is the hunger for disaster.
You know, when you see a thunderstorm on the horizon
and you just find yourself rooting for the storm.
In Mandarin, they have a word "yù yī" --
I'm not pronouncing that correctly --
which means the longing to feel intensely again
the way you did when you were a kid.
In Polish, they have a word "jouska"
which is the kind of hypothetical conversation
that you compulsively play out in your head.
And finally, in German, of course in German,
they have a word called "Zielschmerz,"
which is the dread of getting what you want.
(Laughter)
Finally fulfilling a lifelong dream.
I'm German myself, so I know exactly what that feels like.
Now, I'm not sure if I would use any of these words
as I go about my day,
but I'm really glad they exist.
But the only reason they exist is because I made them up.
I am the author of "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows,"
which I've been writing for the last seven years.
And the whole mission of the project
is to find holes in the language of emotion
and try to fill them
so that we have a way of talking about all those human peccadilloes
and quirks of the human condition
that we all feel but may not think to talk about
because we don't have the words to do it.
It started watching the end credits of "Saturday Night Live,"
and I was beset by the most beautiful and haunting melancholy.
If you ever get a chance to stay up that late,
I would urge you to watch the end credits of SNL.
And so, I decided to try to define that emotion.
And about halfway through this project,
I defined "sonder,"
the idea that we all think of ourselves as the main character
and everyone else is just extras.
But in reality, we're all the main character,
and you yourself are an extra in someone else's story.
And so as soon as I published that,
I got a lot of response from people
saying "thank you for giving voice to something I had felt all my life
but there was no word for that."
So it made them feel less alone.
That's the power of words,
to make us feel less alone.
And it was not long after that
that I started to notice sonder
being used earnestly in conversations online,
and not long after I actually noticed it,
I caught it next to me in an actual conversation in person.
There is no stranger feeling than making up a word
and then seeing it take on a mind of its own.
I don't have a word for that yet, but I will.
(Laughter)
I'm working on it.
I started to think about what makes words real,
because a lot of people ask me,
the most common thing I got from people is,
"Well, are these words made up? I don't really understand."
And I didn't really know what to tell them
because once sonder started to take off,
who am I to say what words are real and what aren't.
And so I sort of felt like Steve Jobs, who described his epiphany
as when he realized that most of us, as we go through the day,
we just try to avoid bouncing against the walls too much
and just sort of get on with things.
But once you realize that people --
that this world was built by people no smarter than you,
then you can reach out and touch those walls
and even put your hand through them
and realize that you have the power to change it.
It's phenomenal.
So I think from there, that changed how I look at words
and what makes words real.
And when people ask me, "Are these words real?"
I had a variety of answers that I tried out.
Some of them made sense. Some of them didn't,
but one of them I tried out was,
"Well, a word is real if you want it to be real."
The way that this path is real because people wanted it to be there.
(Laughter)
It happens on college campuses all the time.
It's called a "desire path."
(Laughter)
And so, languages are a reflection of desire
something that they want to be there.
And it may be the road less traveled,
but it will get there eventually.
But that's not really a satisfying answer,
so I gave up on that one.
But then I decided, what people are really asking
when they're asking if a word is real, they're really asking,
"Well, how many brains will this give me access to?"
Because I think that's a lot of how we look at language.
A word is essentially a key
that gets us into certain people's heads,
and if it gets us into one brain,
it's not really worth it,
not really worth knowing.
Two brains, eh, it depends on who it is.
A million brains, OK, now we're talking.
And so a real word is one that gets you access to as many brains as you can.
That's what makes it worth knowing.
Incidentally, the realest word of all by this measure is this.
[O.K.]
That's it.
The realest word we have.
That is the closest thing we have to a master key.
That's the most commonly understood word in the world,
no matter where you are.
The problem with that is,
no one seems to know what those two letters stand for.
(Laughter)
Which is kind of weird, right?
I mean, it could be a misspelling of "all correct," I guess,
or "old kinderhook."
No one really seems to know, but the fact that it doesn't matter
says something about how we add meaning to words.
The meaning is not in the words themselves.
We're the ones that pour ourselves into it.
And I think, when we're all searching for meaning in our lives,
and searching for the meaning of life,
I think words have something to do with that.
And I think if you're looking for the meaning of something,
the dictionary is a decent place to start.
I saw an interview with the religious scholar Reza Aslan.
He was describing a misunderstanding
that many people have about religion.
He said that what a religion is
is basically a set of symbols and metaphors
that people pour themselves into
to try to express something inexpressible.
Religion is essentially just a language.
That's all it is.
It's a container for whatever meanings we bring to it.
And that got me thinking ...
What if language was a kind of religion.
That would mean that this is basically our holy book.
And if you think of the creation story,
it's really more of a definition story.
In the beginning, there was chaos upon the waters of the Earth
and then God separated the land from the sea,
the fish from the birds, man from woman,
the eternal from the ephemeral.
That's all in these pages.
That's what a definition is.
And so, if we're looking for meaning in the world,
this is our faith, this is our holy book.
Because the reality is,
and the point of this holy book,
and the point of, I think, all holy books,
is that it brings a sense of order
to a very chaotic universe.
Our view of things is so limited
and the universe is so complicated
that we have to come up with patterns and shorthands
and try to figure out a way to interpret it
and be able to get on with our day.
And that's why we need words to do that,
to give meaning to our lives.
But even more than that,
we need words to contain us, to define ourselves.
And that is, I think, a lot of how we use words right now,
we're all sort of begging to be defined, in certain ways.
And I think especially now, with technology and globalization,
it's so easy to get lost in the fog.
Each of us is undefined, in a way,
and the world is becoming ever more undefined.
And so, I think a lot of the structures that we look to
to try to contain ourselves
look like this.
Both in the sense of "pound" and "hashtag."
(Laughter)
It's trying to box ourselves in in certain ways
and say, to look for certain entries and certain categories
and say, "Yes, that's me."
What we do is look at other people
and say, "You're like me ...
And so, we are an 'us'."
And that gives us meaning.
That's just a way of borrowing meaning.
The problem is that a lot of that depends on institutions
and there are so many of us now,
and life is now so complicated and chaotic
that we have to wall ourselves off.
We're becoming fundamentalists in our faith.
Literalists.
Because we all feel these categories start to fall apart.
Have you noticed how many of our conversations now
are about the definitions of words?
I don't know how many times I've seen a conversation on the Huffington Post
that starts "Are you a feminist?"
"What does 'feminist' mean?"
"Who on this debate stage is the real progressive?"
"What does 'socialist' mean?"
"Who is a 'fascist'?"
"Who is a 'woman'?"
Caitlyn Jenner.
"Who is 'black'?" Rachel Dolezal.
These are the kind of conversations we have all the time,
but they're not really about meaning.
They're about how we package the world.
And so, I think the end result
is that we end up looking something like this,
where we allow words to define us.
We forget that all words are made up.
They're just models of how the world could be or should be,
and so, we're all withdrawing in our own communities of concern,
speaking in our own languages
when in fact, the world is more than that.
I think all of us feel
that the categories that we use to give our lives meaning
don't necessarily fit us all that well.
And so, we have to explain to people that,
that, "Yes, I subscribe to this,
but that doesn't define me.
We have to keep doing this over and over,
negotiating how we fit into the categories that we have.
I think a lot of us feel boxed in
by how we use these words.
We forget that words are made up.
It's not just my words. All words are made up,
but not all of them mean something.
And so I think what I'd like to --
The image I have of where we are today,
I think of Anne Frank.
Because she was in her little apartment in Amsterdam
and in a time when everyone around her
was trying to organize humanity
in a way that made sense with clean lines and brutal efficiency,
she was on the inside, organizing her own humanity.
I think there's something really beautiful about that,
because a lot of it was about her own confusion
and her own vulnerability.
And I think that's why we need a new kind of language
that looks a little more like this.
Because each of us could be anyone.
At any given time, we are not just one person,
we are many people at once.
And so, we have to get more in line with how the world actually is,
not to get too caught up in the models that we've imposed on the world.
GPS devices tend to warn you,
reminding you that the map you see is not the real world,
so don't run into a lake.
(Laughter)
And I think we need the same reminder,
that the map is not the real world
and so if we run into these problems,
we have an option to define things for ourself;
we don't necessarily just have to borrow the meanings
that give meaning to our lives.
It is possible --
and I know this because I've been doing it the last seven years --
to come up with new metaphors
that make the invisible visible.
There's something really beautiful about that.
And I think if we got in a better relationship with chaos,
if we stopped trying to oversimplify
the interior storm that all of us are facing
and the confusion and the vulnerability,
and how complicated the world really is,
then we could feel a little more comfortable in our skin
and we wouldn't have to withdraw
within the categories that we allow to define us.
And we could take the power back from our words
and define them.
I think that's a little more healthy relationship.
I don't know how many conversations would be benefited by someone --
Like the game Catch Phrase,
where you're given the actual topic you're talking about,
so the challenge is, "Don't say that word."
I think if we all did that, we would be a little better off.
Because it would allow certain lexical fluidity
that I think we're losing now.
We're all just sort of trapped in our own lexicons
that don't necessarily correlate with people who aren't already like us,
and so I think I feel us drifting apart a little more every year,
the more seriously we take words.
Because remember, words are not real.
They don't have meaning. We do.
I think it's important to remember that.
And if we took some sense of creativity and authorship
in inventing who we are,
that is possible.
It is possible to try to reach for richer metaphors.
This world has never been as complicated,
and our lives have never been more complicated than they are right now.
And so, instead of reaching for the nearest standardized word,
or just begging to be diagnosed with something,
it is worth actually being present,
in sadness, for example.
In the chaos of emotion.
I think that's worth doing.
I think we need new lenses
to help contextualize the chaos that we face all the time.
And if we do that,
if each of us is willing to actually define who it is we are
with some sense of creativity,
I think the world could look a little more like this.
Really messy.
I think we are really messy people
and the world is a really messy world.
And I think this would not be so bad,
us pouring out of these institutions,
which are weakening all the time,
and meeting each other as we are,
in all our vulnerability,
wearing our emotions on our sleeves.
And I think,
as messy as it is,
it would be a little more fulfilling to do that.
And I'd like to leave you with a reading
from one of my favorite philosophers,
Bill Watterson, who created "Calvin and Hobbes."
He said,
"Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul
is a rare achievement.
To invent your own life's meaning
is not easy,
but it is still allowed,
and I think you'll be happier for the trouble."
Thank you.
(Applause)