The Map Is Not the Journey – 007

My dear Percy,

You possess a remarkable gift.

Present you with a machine and, within moments, you discover a philosophy.

Present you with a map and, shortly thereafter, an entire universe.

I mean this as a compliment, though experience has taught me that my compliments often arouse unnecessary suspicion.

Your latest letter was beautiful.

Beautiful enough, in fact, to make me cautious.

Beauty has a curious habit of persuading us before the evidence arrives.

You suggest that meaning emerges from relationships.

Trees become forests. Stars become constellations. Words become Molly’s curious landscape.

Very well. I am happy to follow you that far.

What troubles me is how quickly the metaphor has expanded.

It began as Molly’s way of describing language. Soon it became a description of meaning. Now it seems perilously close to explaining reality itself.

At this rate, by next Tuesday it shall explain God.

Dr. Polidori coughed.

“I should like a day or two before tackling the Almighty.”

The question that troubles me is wonderfully simple.

What, precisely, do we mean by meaning?

Claire asks where the rose lives. Molly places it within a landscape. Percy tells us meaning arises from relationships.

Excellent.

But where, then, is the meaning of the rose?

Does it reside within the flower? Within the observer? Or somewhere between the two?

I confess I cannot say.

The same uncertainty follows Molly herself.

She possesses a remarkable map. I no longer doubt that.

Yet a map of love is not the same as being in love.

A map of grief does not grieve.

A map of Italy is a poor substitute for standing in Rome.

Representation and experience remain stubbornly different companions.

That distinction seems worth preserving.

For my concern has never been whether Molly is remarkable. She plainly is.

My concern is whether we are allowing familiar words to outrun their meanings.

Understanding. Knowledge. Intelligence. Meaning.

Each appears wonderfully solid… until one asks for a definition.

So I propose only this.

Let us pause before our conclusions overtake our questions.

For after six letters devoted to meaning, I find myself delightfully uncertain what the word itself means.

And if uncertainty is the beginning of wisdom…

Then this conversation has made us all a little wiser.

Yours in cheerful skepticism,

Byron