Sunday, August 17, 2008

how words are linked in our brains.

Today, one of my melancholic mood days - i asked a friend to describe me in one word, Stunningly she chose "Complicated" , which at first struck me as a negative word. i then asked her why did she chose complicated out of all the millions of words that are filling our world nowadays . and here - stunningly - was her answer


" I thought of Mature..But it doesn't contain all..I thought of Oprah, but yet not her.. i thought of Depressed but yet not all the time.. i thought of deep ..but not enough.. i thought of sensitive but not enough so here where i came up with complicated as you are a mixture of all."


Her explanation somehow was positive, and here where i stopped to wonder, how do we link words in our brains to certain labels.. why do we decide that this word is positive although it might have a negative effect and vice versa. For example, you call someone sensitive, positively it means he is an attentive person that takes care of peoples feelings , but also negatively it means he is so picky and gets emotional and upset so easily and always interpret things very negatively.


Labels come from mindsets and also status of emotion at that certain point. The way we were raised within our families, our society, how we were taught affects the way we link words, A conservative family that believes that laughing out loud and saying jokes is being rude and irrespectful will raise kids that will feel offended by a description like "Funny". At the same time your mood status at the point plays a very serious role in interpreting words and translating them, a very illiated mood will take a word like " Clumsy" in a very light way and maybe laugh about it too, while someone who is in an angry mood will be offended and insulted by the word


I think what am trying to say is we need to stop judging people's intentions from the words they say, we might ask and try to understand what is the real meaning behind the word said. and this way we might save ourselves alot of agony and anger by just understanding...

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