Word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word.
Do you notice how as you read or say a word repeatedly without interruption, its meaning starts to get lost on you? Have you ever gotten that feeling where as you read a word, you suddenly just forget its meaning, and the word just becomes a jumble of sounds and letters?
If you’ve ever gotten that feeling before, you’d know how scary it is and how weird it feels to forget the meaning of a word you knew just about a minute ago. Researchers have coined the term “semantic satiation” to describe this psychological phenomenon. Semantic satiation occurs because our brain essentially gets “tired” to the repeated exposure of the word and as a result, the neural system eventually starts to lose the ability to fire neurons.
Now, I could go on and give you an extensive scientific background on semantic satiation, but what I’d like to highlight today isn’t about why semantic satiation occurs and what happens in our brain when it does. Today, I’d like to bring your attention to the semantic satiation that occurs in our lives every day without us realizing it. Obviously, repeating words over and over without interruption isn’t something we do every day for fun. However, there are certain words in our lives that we tend to use a lot and as we do, its meaning often starts to fade. A cliché but still notable example is “love”.
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
The word “love” used to hold great value and was something we said only when we had very strong feelings towards someone, like that heart-clenching, palm-sweating feeling we get around a person we love or the comfortable silence shared between a husband and wife. “Love” used to describe a mother’s bond with her child, or the laughter and happiness shared between two best friends. Nowadays, however, we use the word “love” increasingly loosely to describe other emotions like how we feel towards a food or song we like. “Love” no longer describes the powerful emotion shared between two people and its loose repetition has diluted its meaning.
In my opinion, semantic satiation doesn’t just occur with words too. Just like how the repetition of a word can render it meaningless, the same can be said with the repetition of an experience. For example, the first time we boarded a plane and traveled, it was an out-of-this-world experience. But as society progresses and technology advances, planes are no longer anything special. It’s merely another means of transportation from one place to another. The same goes for things we experience often.
Walking is no longer special.
Listening to music is no longer special.
Reading is no longer special.
The ability to communicate with each other is no longer special.
Capturing a photograph, a moment, is no longer special.
As our world evolves and simple things like these are something we get to experience on a daily basis, they start to lose their meaning. We don’t take the time to be thankful for our ability to simply walk on the road and take in the sights and sounds around us. Listening to music is now something we do to cancel out the silence as we drive.
We do not think about the time taken to craft the melodies and beats of the music or the fact that music once never existed at all. Taking a photograph is now something we do for our Instagram feeds or to “capture” a moment, though we never take the time to actually look around and appreciate what’s around us. It’s a scary thought, isn’t it? That soon, nearly everything will mean nothing.
There are so many important and special experiences that we go through every day but we no longer appreciate them because it’s become part of our daily routine. Semantic satiation occurs in our lives every day and we do not even realize it. We have taken for granted so many things that used to mean something way back when. As our abilities grow – like talking, reading, walking, writing – they have grown at the expense of one very important ability: the ability to be grateful.
So, tomorrow, when you wake up in the morning, think about every single thing you do before you do them. Experience everything as if you are experiencing it again for the very first time. Think about the feel of the warm water running down your body as you take a shower, keeping you clean. And as you take notes in class, think about the paper you are writing on and the existence of the English language, allowing you to take down important information and knowledge. And before you go to sleep at night, think about the feel of the soft bed on your back and the roof over your head.
There are so many things to be thankful for. We must not allow our ignorance to cloud our appreciation of the little things. We must acknowledge that we are a privileged generation. And there are so many things to be happy about. After all, it’s the little things that matter.
