Verbum Sapienti is simply where I share my personal thoughts.
My goal is to live reverently, taking the time to think deeply and write deliberately, to sharpen myself and carve my life into something beautiful.
I would enjoy connecting with others who value contemplation, exchanging essays and treatises as discussion, but I would be perfectly happy if this project remained just for me.
“A word to the wise…”
We’ve all heard the phrase, but for the longest time, I didn’t understand the meaning. I knew how it was used – that it emphasizes some advice about to be given – and I took it to mean “If you’re wise, you’ll listen to what I’m about to tell you.” I learned recently, however, that the phrase we all know is only the beginning of the original, “A word to the wise is sufficient,” translated from the Latin “verbum sapienti sat est.”
The deeper meaning behind the complete phrase moved me. It beautifully encapsulates an idea I’ve had recently about language and the mind.
Every time we speak or write, our words go into free fall. It’s as if our meaning is tossed through the air to another person. They might catch it well, understanding us flawlessly, or they might drop it, lost and confused at our meaning. However, most often (and unfortunately worst of all), they catch our meaning imperfectly. They believe they have understood you, and the miscommunication goes unnoticed.
This gray area causes a lot of grief, understandably, but the beauty of it is that, most of the time, no one is the wiser. Most of the time, neither we nor they ever realize that there was a miscommunication, because the imperfect meaning the other person received from us is “good enough.” The idea I mentioned earlier is that this is how all language works: it is a tool that was only ever meant to be “good enough,” and that waste time discussing the exact verbiage of philosophers or authors, when, in truth, all communication is subject to some uncertainty.
It goes like this: say you are a teacher, explaining one concept to multiple people. Afterward, everyone in the room understands the concept to some percentage of understanding. The luckiest few (in experience or chance) get very close to understanding the concept 100% without much effort. Most people have some level of understanding centered around a mean, but not a full grasp, and some others do not understand at all. Wisdom is how much of a deficit in understanding one can overcome in the moment. Say a wise person falls somewhere among average understanding, for sake of the example, let’s say they can rise an extra 20% (using context clues, etc.), whereas an averagely wise person who started from the same place might be able to rise only extra 5%.
This brings us back (finally, sorry) to my meaning: the wisest person might only need one word to understand what you mean. A word to the wise is enough. They can start at 1% and make up the other 99% through their wisdom.
So, for me, “verbum sapienti” isn’t meant as a boast or an assertion that I’m worth listening to, but the opposite. It’s a hope that you, reader, are wise enough to understand me anyway, despite my shortcomings – that you can feel what I felt and see the world how I did when I wrote these words, even as I teach myself how to share that with you.
I hope that you find my words sufficient.
Verbum Sapienti 