What's along the way?

 I am of the ilk to question matters if that matter is going to consume a considerable amount of my time.  So,  there were particular points in life where I had to know something before continuing down the path.

That's why I took Koine Greek in college.  I thought, If Christianity is so important, and I'm going to spend a lot of time in churches and around church people, then what does the New Testament really say?  Are the preachers telling the truth?  So, I learned Greek, studied the documents, and devoted a great deal of reading to the translation of the document.  In the end, there were a whole lot more questions than when I started.  It turns out that everything nearly is a matter of interpretation.  That's just how language is.

That's why I took Classical Hebrew later in life.  I thought, If I go farther back in time, will the language establish or not establish the idea that God was around in the beginning.  Is there a solid idea of God in the early stages of the Old Testament?  So, I learned Hebrew, studied a great deal about the Hebrews' way of thinking and their culture, and found that words had several uses in the ancient days.  When all was said and done, the words were a matter of interpretation.  The first words for God were plural like all the myths of all the major civilizations of the world.  They have just been interpreted as singular because of influences later on the timeline.  That's how language works.

That's why I pursued the science that deals with language.  I thought, If I understand the machinations of language in general, then understanding people will help me communicate well with them.  Is there a silver bullet for knowing the intentions behind people's words?  So I followed a rigorous course of knowing all about the many-splendored aspects of languages.  Finally, yes, I discovered the dimensions of language that reveal thought in printed word and in spoken expression, and found that many people are in the business of hiding themselves, interpreting their own words, and making their actions different from their words.  Oh, yes.  Tangled webs.  Can enough study help to untangle webs?  Can a person learn to interpret a person's original words, reinterpret reinterpreted original words, and interpret the punctuations of silences that are nested before, between, and after the interpretations and reinterpretations?  Because that IS the nature of language.

Has this long trail wanting to know original thought benefited me at all?  It has certainly made me a more contented person to have followed an original idea to its logical conclusion.  But, if you ask if the destination was worth the trip, then I don't fully know.  Life is very convoluted.  Many things are not as they seem.  Yes, there is satisfaction, but there are just as many dilemmas or answers not fully evaluated.  And although there are answers to the questions that rise along the way, and some spots on the path are splendidly majestic, the journey is often unsettling, and the people around you wonder about you because the journey changes the person that takes it.