Let Me Think About It Before I Say It

Let Me Think About It Before I Say It

Some years ago now I heard a Chinese novelist who grew up in China but writes in English, say that one his favorite English words was solitude. In Mandarin there is no word for solitude, though there are words for alone or lonely. But the word solitude tells a story about an aloneness that is not loneliness, but a sense of wholeness or completion when we are alone. “Without a word for it,” he said, “the experience itself was known to me but elusive. With the word it was possible to be with the experience and name what I knew to be true. “

Someone also recently talked about how the Chinese do not use words such as please and thank you and excuse me. These are taught to our children as required words with family, friends or strangers. But in China these words are seen as words that distance one another and instead need to be read in the actions of people together, especially in a family context. The father serving the children and his wife first at the table is living please, and the children’s faces as they receive their food hold the thank you for their father’s kindness. The turning away after embarrassment or shame says, excuse me, more clearly than words could express.

People whose native language is Arabic use the word enshalla—“If God wills”—when any plan is made for the future, whether near or far. They will say, “I will see you at 2pm enshalla.” In this word is a letting go of the control that we westerners are so sure of. It is an embracing of the true uncertainty of our lives and the possibility that what we know now, may be undone a half an hour from now. Sometimes, Christians say, “I’ll be there, God willing.” But the if-ness of the Arabic phrase turns everything into question in a way that makes it more meaningful than the familiar Christian cliché. And it brings a God-centeredness to the world that our secular rational mindset does not.

In Senegal the word poli is nearly as common as Arabic’s enshalla. Though the English translation is I’m sorry, the meaning extends far beyond this to include feeling another person’s sorrow or pain. This is what we want to express to the surviving spouse at the memorial service, or parents who experience the death of a child, or even a child facing the first reality of death or loss or betrayal. Instead we have to settle for the thin and wan, I’m sorry, the same English words we use when we inadvertently bump into someone with our shopping cart at the Fred Meyer.

Among the Eskimo native community the word most commonly heard is quyana. Recently, I received at quyana back from a native woman, she calls herself a First Alaskan, and I had the sense of its deeper meaning even in the virtual context of email. It felt like the positive sense of the Senegalese poli with the same sense of being with, but this time sharing another’s joy. Again, it seems deeper to me than our limp, wow, that’s great. English seems to have a paucity of words for celebrating with someone. The thanks of quyana go to deeper more rooted place of togetherness. When Yu’pik elder Katherine stands up in church and says (and sometimes sings) her quyana to God, she is witnessing to her daily experience of God’s loving Presence.

Someone told me recently that in their family they say poor baby for hard times. Without any sarcastic inflection they simply say they need or notice that someone needs a poor baby when things go awry in their life. It solves nothing except acknowledging the difficulty and being with the person who holds the dilemma in their lives. My own wise daughter told me once that she realized that the phrase, that sounds really hard, works in a multitude of circumstances. And keeps her from her tendency either to fix a friend or judge someone for their foolish behavior.

All of this makes me realize that the shape and meaning of words brings shape and meaning to my life, to all of our lives together and alone. Or words not known or spoken limit the ways that we are with ourselves or with others. I wonder, can we live into what we say or can we only say something about how we live?