Symbols to Live By

Legacy of A Language Beyond Words

After seeing the film I walked out to my car in a kind of daze. I sat in the parking lot for a long time trying to let what I had just seen sink in, trying to find a filing cabinet for it in my head. It was early November 2016 and the film, “Arrival” had just been released. A profound theme in the film was the power of language to shape culture. Because of the shift that I was sensing in our own culture at the time, the depth of that concept got under my skin, the concept of language with that kind of power.

No doubt language has the power to influence, but the theme of this film was way beyond that. It had to do with a language with the power to shift our thinking to such a degree that a whole new world would be needed to navigate such change, it seemed like that kind of shift would mean nothing short of a transmutation of the universe we live in.

The sense of awe I felt in that moment and the understanding that came has never left me. Language can be so tired and limited that it loses its capacity to facilitate humanity’s development. That thought haunts me. But the possibility of a language that has the capacity to transcend limitations gives me hope. That thought has caused me to fall in love with symbol, metaphor, myth and story.

Profound and significant messages that transcend language are deeply rooted in primal origins like cave drawings, oral traditions of story, archetypal images and even patterns in our natural surroundings like circles, spirals and fractals.

Nature itself is a kind of metaphor. When a hawk soars overhead and we see it, really see it, that message bypasses our intellectual process and registers in the domain of our soul. When a newborn nestles in our arms and the warmth of its body ignites tenderness, when we sense that a mountain range is unveiling its majesty, when the ocean commands our silence, all of these things are speaking more clearly and with more authority than any spoken language.

Like all languages, the language of symbols has to be practiced in order to be learned, really learned. Most of us are able to decipher the rudimentary building blocks of symbols, but few of us are fluent in its language. This is a language that is speaking past our intellect into our soul. It often comes to us in quiet and undistracted moments; a walk in the woods, patterns revealed in the thoughtful study of barren trees, the moon’s cycles, the turning of the seasons. This is the language of primal origins and archetypal images. This is a universal language coming to us from the deep place of ancient roots.

We are in desperate need of a way back to the ancient roots of wisdom that is reminiscent of the time when fables, fairytales and legends were part of the legacy given to us by the elders. I don’t know if I’m able to say what I mean. There is something missing, language should be more, mean more than the exchange of information. It should be valued as a powerful and necessary ingredient that is baked into the cultural truth that we take in as nourishment for the lives we live.

What symbols around you are waiting for an invitation to speak?

Writing Prompt for the Week: Language