Tag Archives: Reflection

On My Mind

A Little Bit Outside

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Every so often there are moment that remind us of the groups we are fully, intrinsically, unquestionably part of . . . and the groups we are not. The groups where, for one reason or another, we stand a little bit on the outside. This is not necessarily a negative thing; we cannot be an invested member in all of our groups, simply because there’s not enough of us to go around. Furthermore, we might not want to be so deeply involved, perhaps because this would present us with obligations that we are not interested in or prepared to shoulder. It can be painfully difficult to come to terms with the groups that we want to be part of that do not want us, but that is not of interest in this post. Rather, this post is about recent circumstances in which group membership was unspoken but thrown into focus.

Language and Culture

Before I moved overseas, I helped out with the international student exchange program at my school. This opened my eyes to the question of integration: How do I help young people integrate into a group that is relatively homogeneous . . . and very different from what they are used to? This question changed in form when I had the opportunity to work in a very diverse environment in which integration was a question caught between language and culture. (Danau Tanu’s phenomenal Growing Up in Transit deserves mention here for its impact on the way I think about schools and language.)

In my somewhat nomadic adulthood, I find that language plays a more important role in my interactions and friendships than I would have guessed. For example, there is a difference in the shared understanding that I immediately sense with those who come from the same linguistic background as I do. I almost always know who is American (accents aside) based on the words that they choose in certain situations, or the way that they explain past experiences. Having worked with so many Brits, Canadians, Australians, and Kiwis over the years has tuned me into the differences in our cultural contexts, and therefore also informed the words that I use when talking to certain people. My favourite example here is “college”. This has a meaning in the US that does not match the meaning used by English speakers, and sharing the context is important. Telling a story about a high school experience needs a different explanation when I’m speaking with people who had a similar educational experience to mine. I am immediately “in” with those people, and forever “a little bit outside” of others.

A few weeks ago, my partner and I had dinner with friends and talk turned to just that – our school experiences. Not only did I have to ask clarification questions about what was clearly a shared understanding among the others, but I also had to provide background context before much of what I said could make sense. I laughed along with them as we talked, fully aware that the picture in my head of their world was likely as inaccurate as their picture of mine. The pleasure is in finding common ground despite the differences, and seeing my own experiences through new eyes.

Things like this happen so often. There are many instances in which my partner and I interpret actions or events differently, to say nothing of the differences in our language. Because I am the one who has moved, it is my responsibility to adapt to where I am rather than expecting to find what I chose to leave elsewhere. I find that I am sometimes caught unexpectedly unaware simply because I didn’t know that there could be another idea, interpretation, or action. I am simply “not from here” and haven’t run into this particular circumstance yet. A little bit outside, as it were.

I’m not sure when one begins to feel at home in a culture, though I have had years of experiences being surprised at what I found when I returned to North America. Sometimes I know how to live the way people in Germany live and I do it automatically, and sometimes it’s like seeing yourself in a mirror and forgetting that you got a haircut. It’s familiar but not quite right.

Social Groups

And now for a completely different example, one in which no one is talking about the groups that everyone knows are at the centre of the conversation.

In order to make plans for the summer holidays, I sent a message to a group of people who I had previously talked with about plans. The daily lives of these individuals are intertwined and I am the one clearly on the outside, a result of the choice made to live somewhere else. It is not a secret that this group interacts without me, that I fit in only at the seldom moments when I’m around. If I ever had different expectations, I lost them a long time ago. And I’m no more present for this group than they are for me; we interact infrequently, as has been the habit since before I knew it was a habit, and otherwise, it’s pretty silent.

For that reason, it didn’t entirely come as a surprise when my message went unanswered. I had anticipated precisely what I did not like, which is becoming a topic of conversation that I was not privy to. Being outside of this group means that I am not privy to very much, but it was obvious what was happening when I received no replies to a message that, among people who are part of each other’s lives, would have received replies. That the group responded (by not responding) en masse suggests that a discussion had occurred, a course of action deliberately taken.

This is a situation in which a group was clearly more than just one group, and being outside the group meant not being in the group at all. It’s interesting because this fact was always simmering under the surface and now it is fully out in the open, precisely by not being open. One of the things I learned when first working to integrate groups of students was that friendships thrive on shared experiences; it is difficult to feel connected to people when our shared experiences are few and far between, and especially when, looking back, what was ostensibly shared was only shared at the acquiescence of the group, and not those standing a little bit outside.

Reflections

Our daily lives are enmeshed in relationships, both those we’ve chosen and those we have been forced into, for a range of reasons. Building and maintaining relationships is a process with which we are all familiar, and it governs the way we structure our world. I love teaching the human relationships topic in psychology because it’s about the everyday experiences of all of us, immediately relatable and immediately captivating.

Maybe it’s because of teaching psychology that I am fascinated by the inner workings of my own relationships, and try to be conscious of the role I (and others) play in each of them. I think the important lesson here is that relationships are complex and there are more stories to explain them than the ones I can tell; just because I’ve interpreted a situation a certain way doesn’t mean someone else has. Humility plays an important role here, too. We must be humble enough to listen to other viewpoints, as well as confident enough to express when we disagree. We must be vulnerable enough to let others in, and strong enough to stand on our own. It’s a delicate balance, being human, and that is what we doubtless share, regardless of who is on the inside and who stands a little bit outside.

Bad Herrenalb, Germany – February 2023
On My Mind

Braids and Bicycles

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“Things I learned from Covid” was the title of a meme I saw online recently and, making light of the situation, it made me smile. It led me to consider what I learned during Covid, things that are well and truly part of my current life and times. There were a variety of things that I learned, as did we all, and I’ve written about my thoughts on online learning, interpersonal interaction, and how to move countries during a pandemic. I learned big things, we all did, but in keeping with the meme that I saw, I’ll keep this upbeat and practical.

French Braids

Part of the before-school routine when I was young was that my mum would do hair. One of us ate while the other brought my mum a comb, brush, and elastics, and then we switched. I remember asking for pigtails (which, having heard wrong as a little girl, I called “pink tails” until she took pity on me in my teens and corrected me) and braids, and sometimes “two pieces tied back”, which is exactly what it sounds like. A low ponytail I could manage myself, but I needed help with a high pony.

Throughout my childhood, French braids remained elusive. My mum couldn’t do them as swiftly as she could everything else, despite buying a nifty tool that was supposed to help you separate the strands and count them (or something). And of course, I loved French braids. My aunt did them for me when I visited and I’d sleep in them, enjoying the texture against my scalp. When I got older, friends did them at sleepovers or at the pool. Much later, I was always a little envious of people with beautiful braids, envious and impressed. French braids seemed impossible, and yet everyone had them. So they couldn’t be impossible.

During the pandemic, I spent a lot of time biking around Singapore, sometimes alone but also with friends when the regulations permitted it. And it was during this time, frustrated at the ponytail coming apart under my helmet, that I learned how to French braid my own hair. I learned just by trying what I had seen other people do countless times. Trying over and over – after all, I had the time.

For a while, I could only manage one braid, but I’ve since done as many as four. Two is usually my look of choice, though I admit that the ends look a little funny with my most recent short haircut. I’m fully aware that these braids aren’t beautiful – I have neither the hair nor the patience for that – but every time, I’m also fully aware of the circumstances under which I finally cracked this mystery. And it makes me smile, every day.

Bike Tricks

In keeping with the theme of spending a lot of time on my bike during the pandemic, it was then that I finally mastered the art of riding a bike with no hands. Having seen enough people (mostly kids and teenage boys) riding along casually hands free, some even texting while occasionally looking up (which I haven’t tried and won’t try), I decided it couldn’t be as hard as I thought it was. After all, I could French braid!

And like most mechanical things, I really just had to try. And try. And balance my weight properly. And ride a little faster. And keep my spine straight and abs engaged. And just ride. Without hands. And then one day I could do it and that was that. Sometimes, a little perseverance goes a long way.

Now I know that riding without hands is less of a trick and more of a means of stretching out the wrists and fingers on a longer ride, or to give the back a break. It is also much easier now that I have bike bags and never ride with a backpack. However, during my time in Singapore, it used to make the security guards at the gate laugh when they saw me. At a school where not many people rode to school, I cycled in wearing dresses and pencil skirts, enjoying the tiny decline after the tiny incline, hands in the air to wave hello. We needed something to laugh at then, too.

It’s easy to make light of what I learned during the pandemic, as easy now to laugh as it was necessary then. These are little things, and I find that it’s the little things that we can grasp and point to. I can’t tell you when I made my peace with the time I “lost” during the pandemic, but I can tell you that I learned to French braid my hair and ride my bike with no hands during this time. I can’t articulate when I accepted solitude rather than being frightened by it, but I can tell you that I find that centre again when putting my hair in braids or removing my hands from the handlebars to stretch. There was an era, a time, and then there is what remains from it.

So what did I learn from the pandemic? Plenty.

Singapore – May 2020
On My Mind

Dreaming in Tongues

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Very early on in the German learning adventure that started just over two years ago, I began dreaming in German. This had never happened before, despite a lifetime of exposure to multiple languages. The difference is probably that I immersed myself in studying German in a way I’ve never done before with a language, spending hours after work and on the weekends learning. I grew up with Hebrew beginning in kindergarten, studied French in high school, and had two different forays into Italian and one into Spanish. My parents spoke French to each other when my siblings and I were young so that we wouldn’t understand, and my grandparents have always brought in some Yiddish. But to dream in any of those languages, even when my Hebrew and French were easily conversational? Never.

And I have to say, it’s exhausting.

I spend many weekends speaking more German than English, a critical aspect of immersion that is unique to this language experience. Weekends are also when I watch television or movies, all in German, and it’s not uncommon to find my brain restless on a Sunday evening, dreams unravelling in a series of words and phrases that another part of my mind is (un)consciously correcting or restating. When I wake up on Monday morning and, like every weekday morning, turn on a short podcast of slowly-spoken German news, my mind stays fuzzily involved in the German language. English slips through because I’m tired and takes over entirely by the time I turn on English news radio. And I recognize that I have switched, and I recognize that my sleep was interrupted yet again.

I am at a point with learning German where I recognize that I understand more than I did previously and where my spoken grammar is slightly less poor in certain circumstances. I am growing more adept at expressing myself, though I still (frustratingly) find myself relying on seemingly circumscribed vocabulary, which belies the fact that I actually do understand what people say to me. My nodding and smiling has finally become genuine and I can interject in a conversation, but there are comments I leave unsaid, ideas unspoken. There are things I would slip in as an aside in English in ways that I just can’t do quickly enough in German; I think I’m quieter and more agreeable as a result. Specifically, I’m slower to raise an objection because I don’t have the facility of language to do so. I don’t know if this is a good thing because it leaves me somewhat uneasy for having swallowed my words, but a lifetime of finding objections isn’t necessarily reason to continue. Have I actually changed or have I assented because it’s less taxing to do so?

Not all of my exchanges in German are stilted, however. I am now quicker than before to join a conversation and more successful at extracting the theme based on what I’ve heard. I’m getting better at admitting when I don’t understand and I ask people to repeat new words, but it’s rare that I am then able to use these words on my own in a different setting. (I usually forget them almost immediately, which is why repetition is critical to language learning.) Recently, I made vague plans to meet some people with whom I haven’t spent time with on my own and I surprised myself by following through. It’s a bit like each time I’ve called a doctor’s office for an appointment: Although a successful phone call is the hope, I am surprised and pleased each time it works out that way.

So how does one get better at learning a language? From what I’m told, outside of an intensive immersion course, it takes time. (See above regarding repetition.) The problem is that I’m impatient. The problem is that I think I’m different in German than in English, and I have different relationships with people who I first met in English (including my closest German friends, with whom I now speak much more German) and people who I first met speaking German. I don’t know if anyone picks this up except me, I don’t know if it’s all in my head, and I don’t know if it even matters. But I feel different sometimes, and that does matter.*

On the one hand, meeting people in German and immediately having a relationship in which we communicate in German sets a certain expectation, and I like that. It means I can be a bit quieter without feeling awkward about it (while there’s a part of me in English that’s animated and vivacious, there’s also a part of me that really just likes to sit back and observe) and it means I always have the opportunity to practice my German because that’s just what we do.

On the other hand, I really do like a quick interjection and I like the moments of playing with words or catching intonation and exchanging a grin with someone else who did the same. I have these moments in German and I’m proud of them, but I have never truly appreciated how effortlessly I use English. Now I know. Additionally, I often find that I lack the vocabulary to ask questions in German that I would ask in English, and when I do ask, there’s much I don’t understand in the answers. It’s hard to ask someone what they do for a living as an engineer, for example, because the vocabulary they often use to reply is beyond the vocabulary I generally encounter. Asking about hobbies or travel is much easier because these are words that I know. I love to listen to people talk about what they are passionate about and I can ask probing questions in English that I cannot (yet) ask in German.

Somewhere in those dreams in which I’m half awake, I hope people know that I’m curious. I hope I don’t come across as disinterested. I hope I’m equally kind in both languages, and I hope taken equally seriously, even though I sound much more certain in one language than the other. I would be sad to learn that I’ve misrepresented myself, my needs, my desires in German despite my best efforts. It makes me wonder how my relationships with people will change as my language skills develop, and this is what makes me want to learn, why I’m impatient to make progress.

According to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, of whom there is a statue in the centre of town because of the significant time he spent in Weimar, “Wer freme Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nicht von seiner eigenen. Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.”

I have learned a great deal about English through learning German. Mostly, though, I have learned how hard it is to navigate a world in a different language. It takes courage to learn a new language and humility to use it, and I understand this viscerally now in a way that I did not before. It is one thing to admire language learners and accents, and quite another to feel the tension just below the breastbone that comes from wanting to say something and, whether from losing the moment or not having the words, letting it go. Such words come up again in dreams, of course, and it’s no wonder that I wake only somewhat having slept.

Have I found the words in those tangled dreams? Sometimes, sometimes not. There are dreams that come true and dreams that leave us wanting. Living my life between two languages without constantly being aware that I am doing so is a dream that I am working towards, as diligently as I can. And I am grateful to the many people who are with me on the way.

*One of my psychology students once wrote an extended essay on personality development and bilingualism. A very interesting piece of research.