Words are symbols we can disagree on

but not the meaning behind them

I have lived among people who don’t speak my language for a long time. I understand them well enough, but not when they speak their own dialects. But still… I learn who they are by the abundance of other signals. Language is overrated as one of the tools that helps us communicate with each other.

We might speak to ourselves every now and then, but most of the time, these words are afterthoughts thrown at our actions and feelings, a clumsy way to rationalize or order our inner world. In some sense, we also do this when we communicate with others outside ourselves. We don’t need to talk to the people we really know.