How does one experience a feeling or emotion if they dont know a/the word for it?
For example, one would be stuck with using varying number of very-s with angry if their vocabulary did not include exasperated, vexed, furious, outraged. It may prove to be even harder to identify and express milder versions of the sentiment such as annoyed, miffed, piqued.
Many of these terms carry further refinement of meaning, making it especially appropriate to use in certain contexts. For example, being piqued brings to mind an impulse of emotion in response to a stimulus - such as the instant reaction you feel when someone says something that hits under the belt. Miffed, on the other hand, reminds me of times when I've been petulant or in a huff over something - knowing I'm being immature and probably playing out the emotion to a greater degree than I was feeling it. But if I had never heard of either piqued of miffed, I'd have to settle with being angry. Its similar to a ray of light passing thorough a prism and looking at the spectrum of colors that come out of the other end. The richer your vocabulary, the greater the number of wavelengths that your emotions can be parsed into.
And of course, it ends up being a feedback loop where since you couldn't clearly identify and document the emotion you experienced, you sort of didn't experience it.
But I think this idea extrapolates to cultures / nations too. In fact I first started thinking about it in that context. I'm thinking of the word meltdown - in the context of a person. We see so many celebrities in the US going through meltdowns - and as each new chapter of their bizarre and sordid lives unfold, I cant help but feel how the term meltdown very aptly captures it. Having grown up in India, I follow news of what's going on in that part of the world and that includes keeping tabs on what all the celebrities are up to. Lots of celebrities in India do crazy, weird, funny things - but I have never ever seen or read of one having a meltdown. It can of course be argued that the collective human conscience comes up with new terms as and when they need to be coined - someone in the west at some point realized the parallels in a nuclear meltdown and someone's life unravelling, after all. And I salute those original minds. But I do believe that for the rest of humanity, until they have heard and understood and ruminated over a term, its not possible for them to experience and in fact enact it.
I am sure some celebrity in India will at some point "experience" / "enact" a meltdown. And I have a feeling that once they do, or once a media person has had the good sense to label it as such, we will start seeing a many more meltdowns!
