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They may or may not be possible or desirable
One of the main advantages of our human language ability is its power to bring ideas to mind, at the same time, in ways that we might not otherwise combine those activated ideas, which we call “thoughts”. We can use that power on other people and even on ourselves. Other animals seem to lack that ability.
Here’s a little exercise we can try together and you can try by yourself: Take two or three fairly randomly chosen words that make a phrase or sentence and see what they bring to mind. Here are some examples:
- Talking galaxies
- Fish riding bicycles
- My imaginary possessions
- Frozen yellow ideas
- Wars among furniture
- Sharpened clouds
- Edible cars
- Time beyond time
- Immaterial planets
- Elephant squirrels
- Invisible people
That ability allows us to imagine and even create new things for our lives. It also allows us to imagine and believe in things that are not possible or desirable, and sometimes it is hard for us to tell the difference. There is often a possibility of metaphorical interpretation, somewhere…
