What I wish I’d have known since I was 10 is that in the beginning is the word.
Had I been told, I’d have known from the start that in the beginning of everything we know is the word.
That even the beginning itself is no exception.
But I ignored for the longest time that is how I, the world, and everything else I can name began.
That’s the main reason why it took me until 2016 to rediscover everything I know for the first time.
As Ernest Hemingway put it: “All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.”
Had I known what Hemingway knew all his life, I’d have known all my life, too, that I cannot name anything if I don’t have a word for it first, whether that’s Ernest, Hemingway, look, word, first, or time. Or anythings else you can name.
Call it a dream, it doesn’t change anything.
Talking of which, how do words begin? Do they get invented, created, or produced out of thin air?
It’s a mystery. But what’s beyond the shadow of a doubt is that…
- “Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself.” – Patrick Rothfuss
- “What a word means, a sentence cannot say.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein
Who knows better than I?
SIDE NOTES:
- Newborns won’t tell you how they began, not because they don’t recall, but because they are wordless. They don’t have a word for beginning yet.
- Click here for your FREE complementary copy of “WORD QUOTES WORTH READING TWICE”
