“Leaning forward, I reached in with the moccasins and wedged them into the soft bottom, letting them slide away. I tried to think of something decent to say, something meaningful and right, but nothing came to me…I wanted to tell Kiowa that he’d been a great friend, the very best, but all I could do was slap hands with the water.”
-The Things They Carried, p 178
It is truly amazing how oddly emotions work. We can feel the deepest, rawest emotions within us—so pure we feel we could explode from the true emotion—but then when it comes time to express those emotions, we can barely say a word. Despite such strong feelings, we simply cannot seem to express our emotions verbally. There are nearly one million words in the English language; yet for some reason, there are no words to describe how we really feel. We may try to express emotions such as love and friendship and honor. We may use fancy adjectives or adverbs to modify impeccably chosen action verbs. Yet in truth, emotions simply cannot be rationalized. Feelings cannot be fettered down by words and descriptions. They can be hinted at, but the true best way to express our deepest emotions is simply to act upon them. Sometimes, words must be abandoned, and actions must take flight.
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