“The trouble with you youngsters,” Joe said, “is that if you can’t understand a thing right off, you think it can’t be true. The trouble with your elders is, anything they didn’t understand they reinterpreted to mean something else and then thought they understood it. None of you has tried believing clear words the way they were written and then tried to understand them on that basis. Oh, no, you’re all too bloody smart for that—if you can’t see it right off, it ain’t so—it must mean something different.”

Not comprehending, they hear like the deaf. The saying is their witness: absent while present.

We tried. It was not easy. At first, because of the language; language failed us. We would have to invent a new vocabulary, for our own words were inadequate, anemic. And then too, the people around us refused to listen; and even those who listened refused to believe; and even those who believed could not comprehend. Of course they could not. Nobody could. The experience of the camps defies comprehension.

He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life.

JOHN: I’ll tell you a story about myself. Do you mind? I was raised to think myself stupid. That’s what I want to tell you.

CAROL: What do you mean?

JOHN: Just what I said. I was brought up, and my earliest, and most persistent memories are of being told that I was stupid. “You have such intelligence. Why must you behave so stupidly?” Or, “Can’t you understand? Can’t you understand?” And I could not understand. I could not understand.

CAROL: What?

JOHN: The simplest problem. Was beyond me. It was a mystery.

CAROL: What was a mystery?

JOHN: How people learn. How I could learn. Which is what I’ve been speaking of in class. And of course, you can’t hear it. Carol. Of course, you can’t. (Pause) I used to speak of “real people,” and wonder what the real people did. The real people. Who were they? They were the people other than myself. The good people. The capable people. The people who could do the things, I could not do: learn, study, retain ... all that garbage – which is what I have been talking of in class, and that’s exactly what I have been talking of – If you are told ... Listen to this. If the young child is told, he cannot understand. Then he takes it as a description of himself. What am I? I am that which cannot understand. And I saw you out there, when we were speaking of the concepts of...

CAROL: I can’t understand any of them.

JOHN: Well, then, that’s my fault. That’s not your fault. And that is not verbiage. That’s what I firmly hold to be the truth. And I am sorry, and I owe you an apology.

One of these grand defects, as I humbly conceive, is this, that children are habituated to learning without understanding.

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

They didn't put two and two together. They didn't even know what they knew. I don't know what's the matter with people, they don't learn by understanding; they learn by some other way — by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.

Sometimes skulls are thick. Sometimes hearts are vacant. Sometimes words don't work.

When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.

from an essay for Writers by Nancy Crampton

The words of our childhood became strangers to us- we couldn't use them in the same way and so we chose not to use them at all. Life demanded a new language.

Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.

Most of the problems of the world stem from linguistic mistakes and simple misunderstandings. Don’t ever take words at face value. When you step into the zone of love, language as we know it becomes obsolete. That which cannot be put into words can only be grasped through silence. (6)