The Word, the Whale and the Way

Some moments etch themselves into your memory so deeply that years later, you can still feel them.

For me, one of those moments happened in 1998, when I first walked into a martial arts studio.

I was immediately drawn to the Tai Chi class. Twenty-something people moved in silent unison—nothing but the sound of breathing, the whisper of feet sliding across the wooden floor, the creak of the boards, the rustle of their uniforms. Soft meditative music played in the background. Windows open, a gentle breeze flowing in.

I was captivated. It felt like watching a natural wonder—something alive and ancient, both deeply personal and universally shared.

The Limits of Description

In Eastern philosophy, Lao Tzu wrote:

“The way that can be described is not the eternal way.”

The thing we can talk about or think about is not the thing itself. There’s always a level of reality beyond our words, beyond our models.

I remember an English class in college that brushed against this same truth through the study of semantics: the map is not the territory.

A diagram of the human body isn’t the body itself.

No model, however accurate, can capture the living, breathing, ever-changing reality of an individual.

The Whale and the World

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is another great example. Melville spends pages painting the personality and presence of a whale in vivid detail. And yet, no matter how precise or poetic his words, the real thing—the living creature in the ocean—remains infinitely more than the description.

It’s like the saying, the movie wasn’t as good as the book. But in truth, even the book is just a shadow of the thing itself.

The beating of our hearts.

The surge of emotion in a conversation.

The taste of a perfect bite of food.

The warmth of the sun on your face.

These are experiences—not concepts.

A Marker, Not a Map

This isn’t a “how-to” post or a detailed guide.

It’s more of a channel marker in the river of life, a signal to stay off of the rocks — that there are aspects of our existence that can’t be reduced to bullet points, systems, or even our most honest attempts to describe them.

The internal, uniquely personal dimensions of life are also the most universally shared.

Maybe the goal isn’t to describe them perfectly.

Maybe it’s to experience them fully.