Will-o'-the-Wisp

How does one speak about things that cannot be spoken? We know that the ant communicates with its brethren according to its own ad hoc way of conveyance; the ant can do nothing less, or more, than just this, such that the notion of an ant trying to discuss, say, quantum mechanics, rightly appears absurd and impossible. There are undoubtedly many such matters that a human being cannot fathom or articulate as well—lest we be swept away by the madness of hubris and imagine ourselves so much more than ants. Perhaps, however, the inexplicable and ineffable are not only those things sometimes suggested to us by religion and science—the divine and dark matter, the sacred and spooky action at a distance—but everyday existence. The bloom of the present moment escapes us! We make the moment small, often unintentionally, and always in part out of necessity, according to our human capacities, in order to perceive and experience the sliver of the world that we do. But how much more transcends our notice? And who among us, no matter how skilled in rhyme, reason, and rhetoric, really thinks they can put to words the fragrance of a rose, the rising of the sun, or the heartache of having lost a loved one? “Speak,” Gandhi said, “only if it improves the silence.” So much is better left unsaid, and felt rather than thought. So much is also beyond speech altogether, and that which exceeds our language, must be passed over in silence, as Wittgenstein wrote. Transcendence cannot be domesticated. How does one speak about things that cannot be spoken? The obvious answer is, one doesn’t. And for those who insist on speaking the unspeakable anyway, their words are a will-o’-the-wisp, better exchanged for breathing in beauty, beholding the breathtaking, and savoring not so much how the world is, scientifically or religiously, but that it is at all.