Why Meaning, Memory, and Identity Are Never as Simple as They Look
The Unseen Universe of a Rose
A solitary flower can sit in a glass, unnoticed and ordinary. To most eyes, it’s just another rose, beautiful perhaps, but ultimately unremarkable. Yet behind its petals, within the gentle arc of its stem, it can hold an entire universe. Just like the rose in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, whose value was not found in its outward beauty or rarity, but in the tenderness, time, and care spent upon it, each rose can bear profound significance. To someone, it might carry the warmth of first love, the shadow of grief, or the echo of a memory long past but vividly alive. It becomes unique not because of what it inherently is, but because of the invisible threads of meaning woven around it through personal experience.
“For other people, it’s just a rose, period. But for you, it’s a whole language-game—full of feeling, memory, commitment, and care.”
This insight, borrowed from philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, opens the door to a deeper truth: meaning is rarely embedded purely in things themselves. Rather, it blooms in context, nourished by our experiences and shared histories. Wittgenstein called this a “language-game”—the idea that words and gestures find their significance only through the context and rules we implicitly agree upon. Just as in chess, the value of a piece is determined by its role and position, not simply by its appearance.
A Thousand Hamlets
A rose, therefore, can represent love, loss, passion, or even indifference, all depending on who sees it and why. This illustrates why Shakespeare’s Hamlet, portrayed on stages countless times, remains infinitely varied: “A thousand readers, a thousand Hamlets.” The same prince—melancholic, vengeful, contemplative—becomes new each time he is summoned, shaped by the minds and hearts of those who meet him anew. Hamlet, like the rose, exists not simply on the page or stage, but in the delicate interplay between observer and observed.
First Impressions and the Fluid Self
This brings us to first impressions, those swift judgments we often trust too much. Just as a film’s trailer may mislead or fail to capture its full depth, our initial assessments of others provide only glimpses. Identity cannot be distilled into a glance, a single act, or even a collection of attributes neatly listed like items on a CV. Who we are is fluid, shifting with each interaction, choice, and feeling.
Christopher Nolan’s film Tenet conveys this beautifully when it instructs, “Don’t try to understand it. Feel it.” To understand is to categorize, define, and simplify. But to feel is to live fully in the present moment, embracing complexity and contradiction without seeking to tame it. Some truths are diminished when explained. Some emotions escape words entirely. As Wittgenstein himself wrote, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Silence here is not a surrender but a respectful acknowledgment of the limits of language.
Lost in Translation
Translation vividly demonstrates these limits. Words in one language often lose subtleties, implications, and emotional resonances when carried into another. The French je ne sais quoi, the Japanese mono no aware, and the Chinese mià nzi are not just vocabulary—they are cultural containers, vessels of meaning shaped by centuries of shared human experience. To translate them directly often leaves them empty, stripped of the nuance that originally gave them life.
Yet, even when words fail, connection is still possible. Pixar’s Inside Out illustrates the profound relationship between memory, emotion, and identity. Riley’s “core memories,” glowing spheres of significant experiences, anchor her personality islands, forming the foundation of her identity. As she grows and changes, new emotions complicate her internal landscape. Forgetting is sometimes necessary, a form of emotional pruning that allows new growth. Yet it can also leave us feeling fragmented, searching for a self we no longer fully recognize.
The Ship of Theseus: Identity and Change
This tension between continuity and change is vividly expressed in the Ship of Theseus paradox. Replace every plank and nail of a ship, piece by piece, and the question emerges: Is it still the same ship? Applied to our lives, it challenges our notions of personal identity. Are we the same person we once were if every cell, belief, or memory changes over time?
Philosophers offer varied answers. John Locke believed identity is tied to memory continuity—lose the memory, and you lose the self. Nietzsche saw identity as perpetual becoming, an endless act of self-creation. Sartre rejected any fixed essence, declaring identity a continuous project of choice and action. Buddhism goes further, teaching that no fixed self exists at all, only a constantly evolving interplay of experience and consciousness.
Perhaps identity is all these things simultaneously. We are ships sailing through constant repair, our identities not fixed objects but living stories, continually rewritten through experience and memory.
The Priceless Gift
Consider a ten-dollar gift. From a stranger, it’s mere plastic, disposable. Yet when given by someone whose laughter, tears, and companionship have shaped your life, it transforms into something priceless. Nothing about the object changes; the meaning lies entirely in the context, the invisible threads of relationship, memory, and mutual understanding woven around it.
Gertrude Stein famously wrote, “A rose is a rose is a rose.” Yet even she knew this simplicity held complexity. The mere utterance of “rose” summons centuries of poetry, fragrance, symbolism, and personal meaning. Words, like roses, resonate beyond their literal definitions, echoing within the chambers of our personal histories.
Beyond Words
Thus, identity and meaning refuse simplification. Behind every object, gesture, or word lies a universe of significance waiting to be felt rather than understood. Sometimes the deepest communication occurs without language, through shared silence, an understanding gaze, or quiet acts of care.
Ultimately, we do not fully meet one another through definitions or explanations. We connect through resonance, through recognizing something familiar in another’s story. You may not have lived my exact experiences, but you have surely felt something similar—enough to bridge the distance.
So next time you see a solitary flower in a glass, remember: behind its petals may lie worlds unseen. Resist the impulse to define it too quickly. Instead, let yourself feel it, quietly acknowledging all that language cannot say, all that silence can eloquently express.
Behind every “just a rose” waits an invitation—to step beyond understanding, and into the living garden of meaning.