Truly Willing To Learn The Language Of Each Other...
We now have three places were we like to eat where our waiters speak no English... I see this as my opportunity for a Spanish lesson, even if all my vocabulary is currently centred around eating drinking, the heat 'mucho calor' and going to the loo...
However we have become very adept at responding and willingly speaking Spanish, to the extent that streams of sentences are now spoken to us which we try and work out...
I was talking with a client who is a linguist, he speaks eight languages and enquires politely after the progress of my Spanish, and my Greek... Still on three words a day!
'It's body language first he said, body language and then making the sounds...' He is right, much can be established through body language before the words are understood, and facial expressions, gestures and a desire from both parties to communicate, to connect, and then a willingness to try out the sounds....
When we were little we wanted to communicate, to speak and be spoken to and so we learned the language that was being spoken, and if there were two we learned two...
And so if we desire connection and to communicate with one another we will seek to learn the words, speak the language of another... Which is not always about a foreign tongue; it can be about concepts, experiences, ideas...
Being able and willing to open to another world... And not assuming because someone speaks the language of our country that we will therefore necessarily understand what they are saying without being willing to watch their body language, the gestures the facial expressions; without being willing to step into their world and listen to what it is like there...
To speak the language of the soul requires that we do not enter into a conversation with another without being prepared to hear what they are saying and be willing to stretch to understand their words...
We had a very funny brunch when Tim was here... He wanted to order some black pudding... We tried all manner of ways of describing this delicacy, we we tried 'Nero postre' which made no sense at all to our waitress...
But what struck me about the episode was the willingness to seek to understand Tim's request, the patience,the effort we all went to to cross the bridge into another world, another language to another person....
Eventually Antonio, the owner of Teide was found, who speaks excellent English... Ahhh - Morcilla...!
In every episode of our life, we will be in a different context and within each context the relationships can vary...
If we are in the context of having supper with our friend, it will be different to if we are with our mother or our brother and different again if we are with a potential lover...
Unconsciously we will be bringing in a set of varying beliefs into each different episode, based on family, social, spiritual influences....
This is why being truly willing to learn the language of another first starts with recognising the constructs within us that make up our inner world...
Being willing to explore our own paradigm - our inner map made up of the beliefs and meaning we have attached to the influences in our childhood - is the first step to being willing to speak the langue of whomever we encounter whether they speak our mother tongue or that of a foreign land...
