On Words and Thoughts and Action [TenMinuteTuesday]

It seems I always write about writing when it is time for this forced free-writing that comprises 10 minute Tuesday. That may well be an ill bent toward self-awareness. How long have human beings been writing? Certainly widespread print did not happen until the invention of the press. But I'm told a version of “post-it” notes are found in stone tablets among ruins of Ancient Near East settlements. So we've been doing it for awhile.

Is it better than speaking? What is the most primal form of communication, and is it necessarily better for being oldest? I don't know and I don't think so.

It would seem the most primal communication is non-verbal: the wave, the nod, the grimace, the wink, the kiss. And yet, the first infant communication is a scream. Except it's not. A baby “talks” to its mother in non-verbal ways before it is born.

Our body knows what it thinks, or perhaps better, our thinker is one with the body. The mouth is just one way we communicate our thoughts. All thoughts come out in various ways, just not all verbal. I would argue, as a non-scientist to be sure, that even thoughts of which we are unaware exist and influence our life in non-verbalized fashion.
 

“Why does he do what he does?” 

“I have no earthly idea,” comes the reply. 
“I do not think he knows either.”

I suppose this is a bit of Freud's id, though I am not trying to go there. I'm just thinking about communication, actions, life and how our thoughts have expression in all that we do, not least because actions – all of them – are multi-faceted in cause, rationale, genesis. We do not know ourselves near like we wish or imagine we do.

And then we talk about it.