A verb implies action thus adds to the experience of a doer. An adjective implies perception. it may or may not be right. Create a limitless living of experience or create a prison of adjectives – Decide.
The moment we put an experience into words, we kind of cage it. If I tell a man who has never eaten mango – that it is a kind of sweet fruit – then i am caging the whole experience of eating an mango. The best way to know what it feel to eat a mango is to eat it. Rest all is limiting.
When you say something is easy – you cage it in “easiness”. Or you tarnish the purity of one’s experience with this easiness about it. Now my mind is continuously directed towards the easiness (or difficulty) of it. So what do we do – suspend adjectives?
Any good movie or a good piece of writing usually provides its audience / reader, the experience of the subject without explicitly telling how the subject feels. For example the subject’s experience of being scared becomes reader’s experience without telling that subject is scared.
So i propose – The more we allow our five senses take over, the more OPEN an experience is. If we try to define it, label it, qualify it, we kind of put a full stop to it and at least file it in a particular category and that is how we Cage it. Here is a sample
- The girl was painting
- The little girl was painting
- The girl was painting hurriedly
Adjectives and adverbs are like gift wraps put by people over the original gift. The assumption here is that more richer the experience, more we will learn and enjoy it.
In many ways we are not free and we do not let our children to be free. we put nice adjectives on them and then cage them in these adjectives. we put adjectives to ourselves and do the same. we call our children or ourselves – beautiful, ignorant, smart, irresponsible etc. While we very well know that it is only the behavior of that moment – that can be qualified for a specific adjective – not the person.
If I say I am humorous – then people as well as I myself expect me to be humorous. And when not humorous – people ask are you okay.
The other day – I referred a person to a psychologist and said, “You can contact her, she is very helpful”. After the person had gone away – I regretted my saying – there was no need to put her in the “helpful prison”
Can we suspend these tags? Can we suspend adjectives?
I have had this habit of putting nice adjectives in front of people names and sending them birthday wishes. I am sure that makes them feel good – but poor they – little they realize i have put them in a prison. A prison of these Tags – tied to a adjective – just like a horse tied to a stump – we go round and round that stump – trying to live out of these adjectives – rather then being untied – being limitless, living out of this limitless potential.
More importantly we need to free learning , the learn and eventually free the teacher.
No adjectives to the learning – let the child experience it purely
No adjectives to the learner – let the child operate out of completeness.
No adjectives to the teacher – let the teacher interact with the as much objectiveness.
Let us LIVE with verbs. Those seem to only imply action, experience, time. And verbs move on. And verbs imply change. And verbs imply openness of start, process and end result.
Verbs imply freedom.