Can Language Capture the Enormity of Experience?

“I guess you had to be there,” how many times has someone said this too you after telling you a story? When they told the story they were full of excitement and emotion, but for some reason it failed to capture and excite you as much as the storyteller. This is because language cannot capture the enormity of experience. Don’t get me wrong, there are many great storytellers that possess the ability to describe their experience to the reader exceptionally well. However, it never reaches the full meaning as it does to the writer. Language fails to capture in its entirety the complexity that is a personal experience. With a personal experience comes a complex firsthand belief and memory of what occurred. The firsthand experience is entirely unparallel to a person describing his or her experience. This is because each experience has a different meaning to someone else.

For example I am going to give you a short description about my grandfather’s life.

From the sound of the start gun in 1922 to his sprint through the finishing chute on September 23, 1998, Edward Leske lived a benevolent life. His continuous sacrifice, unparalleled hard work, and unselfish outlook in life spoiled his large family of ten until the day he died. As a tenderhearted man with a reserved personality, Edward led through example rather than his voice. I remember him taking care of my brothers and me one summer when my parents went to San Francisco. Edward enjoyed taking us to our baseball games and watching us play sports he never had time to play himself or watch his own children play due to long work hours. He would tell me before every baseball game I played, “Go hit a homer for me.” I never did hit him that homer, but it always made me feel as if I had played a great game anyway. I remember visiting his house and fighting over couch cushions with my brothers and cousins that filled the T.V. den. Grandpa just sat next to the couch in his special rocking chair, smoking his Swisher Sweet cigar. He kept the peace between me and my brothers occasionally taking a puff of his cigar and then returning to the packer game on the television. I can still picture my grandpa sitting in his special rocking chair with a faint smile on his face watching the packers and smoking a swisher sweet cigar.

Through this tangent I attempted to capture who my grandpa was and what he meant to me to you the reader. Although I am sure I failed to fully express my love for him, after reading this passage I am willing to bet that you can picture this man watching the football game in the T.V. den. However I doubt that you share the enormity that this experience means to me personally. So I guess I could say the words I guess you had to be there, but in reality you had to be in my shoes to capture the full experience of the situation.

In conclusion, language fails to capture the enormity of the experience. However, language serves as a vehicle through which people can share personal experiences, and although the enormity might not be fully conveyed to the reader, the reader gains a sense of the experience that hopefully he/she can remember in their own way.