Language and our real self
Our true self emerges when we become fluent in another language and immerse ourselves in another culture. Something inevitable happens.
From a young age, we are preconditioned by the country we grow up in as children, the language we inherit, and the families and friendships that shape our early world.
All of those things - the rules of belonging, the ways of thinking, even the emotional tones we are permitted - are taught and reinforced through language. Our language is simply preconditioned.
It becomes more than words. It becomes a framework, a set of boundaries tied to “norms” we have been taught to live by. It carries the wounds of our early life, alongside the values that are our guiding stars. It hides assumptions, limitations, and implicit boundaries - refracted through the lens of our earliest self.
But something extraordinary happens when we learn another language, and immerse ourselves in another culture. We loosen those boundaries. We gradually break free of wounds and preconditions. We take on new rhythms, new metaphors, new ways of expressing joy, intimacy or sorrow. We are enabled to become unfiltered, honest and transparent.. with ourselves. We become more able to select our values and keep what serves our purpose in humanity.
We discover that who we are in our mother tongue is not quite the same as who we are in another. Sometimes, the second or third language brings us closer to the parts of ourselves that had no words before.
In that crossing - between words, between cultures - our truest self has the chance to step forward, freer than the one shaped only by the limits of our mother tongue. The silenced.. dormant version of ourselves .. awakens. We meet our truth… the space between languages, between words, the self that is unclothed from preconditioning, revealed in the intimacy of new expression and new thought.
When you see inter-cultural couples or friends, remember this. They are their most honest self in that moment of connection. Their success won’t be defined by the differences.. but by the commonality of truth… their desire to break free.
In speaking a different language, do we then allow ourselves to be more vulnerable and open?
Not just with others. But with ourselves.
Is this a way we can heal our past and be reborn under new light?
She was a humble sparrow,
He a resplendent lyrebird.
They both longed for tomorrow,
To not be something borrowed.
One sang in Do Re Mi,
The other in A B C.
Until they realised,
Their music was in sync.
Do Re Mi or A B C