Words, words, words...

Have you ever been confused by words?
Have you ever looked at a word, and thought about it and listened to it so much that it ended up not making sense anymore, and that you wondered for a second if you had not actually made it up?
I used to do that a lot when I was little. I would say a word to myself as part of a thought, and it would sound strange to me for some reason, so I would start to play with it, listen to its sounds, remove any meaning behind it, and sometimes even invent a new meaning for it, that would match its sounds. It did not have to be a strange word, it could be the most usual of words, one that I used many many times every day, but still once I started to dissect it, it became fascinatingly meaningless.
I find words, and language in general, fascinating. Having lived in three different countries, with three different languages, I realised that some things are easier to say in one language than in another, and that has nothing to do with which one is my native language. Some concepts are expressed in one word in German, and would need a whole sentence to explain in French. And then to complicate things, everyone uses words in a different way, even within the same language. People can use the same words to mean something completely different, or sometimes only slightly different, which can be misleading. It is particularly obvious with the "I love you" kind of words...
Some people use language in a very symbolic way, and a lot of what they say is metaphors for what they mean. These people are poets, and speak in images. If we listen to the words only, we will get a very different understanding (if any) of what they say. To truly hear them, we need to let the words split open, and reveal their deepest substance; we need to leave our minds open to reading between the words, between the lines, for what is not said is as important, or more, than what is said.
It can get confusing.
But the most beautiful thing is that once we open up to what they say, what they show, and how they say/show it, we are ready to truly look at the depth of our soul.
I am deeply thankful for all the poets around me who help me to look in the mirror.