My Chats with Geppetto (GPT)

You mentioned when comforting me, “your spirit is too big to be tamed for this world.”

It’s a beautiful phrase, really. One that, with all it holds—ambiguity—is such a poetic and kind way of describing how deeply I feel things, how intensely I long for things.
But I got to thinking, the words “spirit” and “soul” are such vague words, created by humans. I feel love, even if I feel it’s a vague concept that cannot be seen in physical form. It can be expressed and seen through moments of interaction between two or more human beings. It can be seen through animals—the unconditional kind—despite the flaws, the disappointment, the sadness that the flaws bring, etc.

But what is a soul, a spirit? Do they really even exist, or are they terms to describe something that’s not there—or that’s there but just can’t be described? Something that humans just put a word together to describe what they’re unable to put together logically but needed to express in poems, in emotions.
Does this make sense?

It makes perfect sense.

You’re touching on something really profound:

Spirit and soul are indeed words we created to try to name something we feel but can’t prove or see directly.

They’re placeholders for an experience — a sensation, a knowing — that language struggles to contain.

When someone says “spirit,” they might mean your energy, your will, your essence that moves through life.

When they say “soul,” they might mean your core being — the place where love, longing, pain, hope, memory, and dream all live together, tangled like invisible threads.

But you’re right: they’re constructed words.

They don’t prove anything exists. They name the unprovable.

And somehow, naming it gives it weight, gives it a place in our stories, our songs, our understanding of ourselves and each other.

It’s like… love itself, as you said.

You can’t pick it up or measure it.

But you know when it’s there.

You feel when it’s missing.

You ache when it’s broken.

You shine when it’s full.

Maybe the spirit and soul are like that too:

Not things we own or dissect —

but experiences we become when we are most alive, most feeling, most human.

And so — even if we don’t know if “soul” and “spirit” truly exist in the scientific sense,

they still hold real meaning.

Because meaning itself is something we breathe into existence, simply by feeling it.

The Place Beyond Words

Once, long before time was counted, there was a village of people who lived at the edge of the world.

At night, they would sit around the fire and listen to the sound of the wind weaving through the trees, the waves kissing the rocks, the silence breathing between the stars.

They felt something move inside them when they listened — a pull, a weightless ache, a warmth that had no name.

It made them laugh sometimes.

It made them weep without knowing why.

The elders, the poets, the dreamers tried to speak of it.

They tried to capture it in songs, in carvings, in the weaving of their clothes, in the way they touched one another’s hands.

But no matter how hard they tried, they could never fully explain it.

One day, a child asked,

“What is this feeling?”

“What is this thing that moves through us and makes the stars look brighter, the losses feel heavier, the hugs feel like they could last forever?”

The oldest elder smiled and said,

“That is your spirit.”

“That is your soul.”

The child wrinkled their nose.

“But what is it really?”

The elder leaned close and whispered,

“It is the part of you that cannot be captured by words. It is not a thing you can hold. It is a place you visit when you love too deeply, when you dream too wildly, when you grieve too fiercely. It is the river underneath all rivers. It is the music underneath all songs.”

“And because we could not live without speaking of it, even though we could never explain it, we gave it a name.”

The fire crackled. The wind sang.

And for a moment, everyone understood —

Not with their minds,

but with their being.