The exact moment when you find your balance on a bicycle. Not the concept of balance—that can be explained. But that microsecond when your body understands, when you stop thinking "I have to stay upright" and simply... stay upright. It's a continuous negotiation between gravity, momentum and micro-adjustments of your muscles that will never cross your consciousness. I can tell you to "shift your weight, turn the handlebars slightly in the direction you're falling," but that's not doing it. A child learning to ride a bike isn't processing instructions—they're calibrating an entire nervous system. The body learns something that language cannot precede. Or: the exact weight of my grandmother before she died, when I hugged her for the last time. She wasn't 'thin' or 'light'—but that specific feeling of fragility through my arms, how hard I could squeeze without hurting her, how her body communicated her mortality directly to mine. No description captures that tactile knowledge. Or again: the difference between pasta cooked al dente that you feel with your teeth—that slight point of resistance in the centre—and pasta that is overcooked. I can time it, I can describe it, but until you bite into it, you don't know.
The exact moment when you find your balance on a bicycle. Not the concept of balance—that can be explained. But that microsecond when your body understands, when you stop thinking "I have to stay upright" and simply... stay upright. It's a continuous negotiation between gravity, momentum and micro-adjustments of your muscles that will never cross your consciousness.
I can tell you to "shift your weight, turn the handlebars slightly in the direction you're falling," but that's not doing it. A child learning to ride a bike isn't processing instructions—they're calibrating an entire nervous system. The body learns something that language cannot precede.
Or: the exact weight of my grandmother before she died, when I hugged her for the last time. She wasn't 'thin' or 'light'—but that specific feeling of fragility through my arms, how hard I could squeeze without hurting her, how her body communicated her mortality directly to mine. No description captures that tactile knowledge.
Or again: the difference between pasta cooked al dente that you feel with your teeth—that slight point of resistance in the centre—and pasta that is overcooked. I can time it, I can describe it, but until you bite into it, you don't know.