By the boathouse

This is my family´s "sjöbod", a typical sight on the west coast of Sweden. Magnificent faces in the end. I am the last one by the way.

Words in trancit

If you only want to see the pictures, scroll past this one.

Words have always interested me. With words, you translate your state of mind into thoughts and then pass them on by simply uttering them. Almost like one-way telepathy, is it not? Science says however that approximately 90% of your communication is through body language.

Maybe it is so, that this is partly because our body language is a more direct representation of our feelings, whereas our words are simply a feeling or inner thought converted into words, that are then spoken to someone who most certainly have a different relation to every word you say. Just like the digital recording never matches the feeling of the analog LP-recording, the spoken word does not convey the message as clear as our body. And in this case, the digital resolution is very low.

In the Swedish language, approximately 129 thousand words exist today that are used. Imagine how many things there are in this world, and realize how few of them you can name. Just take your feelings as an example, the closest and most personal things you have. Think of all the endless combinations where you have a "happy" feeling in someway. Buying something, winning something, getting rewarded and so on... How many words do you have to describe those feelings? Happy, cheerful, glad...some more maybe? For all those different kinds of "happy"!? No wonder body language is key when communicating since our vocabulary is so lacking.

Now, picture this: What if you had a word for exactly every feeling you ever had, and you were able to transfer that meaning without problems to the other person. Would body language still stand for 90% of your communication?

Just after the bees went in for the night

Shades of purple