“how odd i can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words” - david foster wallace

and it's relevance in my life

My brother’s senior quote in high school was a quote from David Foster Wallace: “How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words”

When I first read it, the high school punk in me said, “That’s Badass; stick it to the man.” But now these words hold even more meaning to me than they once did.

I recently took time away from college this past spring, to grieve and figure out quite honestly what the f I wanted from the world.

So I did what any well to do white kid would do during time away from college. I traveled the country trying to find myself (I’m still looking so If someone has seen a scrawny white boy trying to be pretentious let me know).

I spent a month watching a monk 13 years older then me dying on his feet in mass so he could praise a God I no longer belive in.

I experienced the eclipse alone in the forest while no one was around for miles, in that moment I understood why out ancestors thought the world was ending.

I saw the Grand Tetons and a mama bear with her cub in the Sequias in the course of the same week.

After all of this I found myself back in my college town face to face with two different people.

Those who asked me to describe the impact of these event to them into words I can still not give them

or

simply were indifferent that these experiences now live inside me.

And after each experience the thought “How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words” rung in my head like a haunting hymn.

The more I think of this I think to myself, “Isn’t this what it means to be human?” One thing I keep finding myself drawn back to recently is the idea that as humans we can hold paradoxes in us. Like the desire to be lost in a collective but to also be that unique one in a million.

It was an idea presented to me my therapist that I still actively work on. I remember as a kid hating when people didn’t follow through on there promises. Even though that the idea of that is a whole other post idea, the nature of the though is still there. We say one other thing but yet do another. Belive two contraditing belifs at once or desire complete opposite things that can not exist together.

I wonder If as humans we all accepted this idea that all humans had this depth would we be kinder to each other? Would we love each other better? Would living become easier?

What about for ourselves? Would we accept the good and the bad better in our life?

Would I give myself more grace for falling short of being a good human? would I do the same for others? Will I then understand the words that people give me as all the beautiful things inside of them?

I don’t know. maybe I never will know but the least I can do is try to convert the things inside of me into better words for those around me.