Lost in Translation
Posted on 8th September 2022 at 20:45
Mid conversation I receive an answer I wasn’t expecting. How often do we move through life with a level of assumption in every step? Once we set something in our minds, we can get stuck. Concluding my life’s events from this one conversation I’ve shut down, speechless. Everything I want to say, lost in translation.
Much of what we want to say does get lost in translation, not received how we meant. Out of fear of how others may respond, apprehension of judgement on what’s to follow we lose confidence. We all think and feel differently and quite often we judge from our own insecurities and view of the world. Sometimes missing things altogether, and at times holding ourselves back.
Waking up with the sunrise again this morning I glance out the window, it feels like it’s going to be a warm day. The pale blue sky with a subtle background of yellow, a base behind the still, light grey clouds.
How will the weather turn out? We just don’t know - each of us waking up to a slightly different scene. Our own view and perspective of what we see out of the window.
Assumptions of how the day will unfold based on the scene ahead. As I continue to write the clouds have thinned out a little, a lighter shade of grey but almost covered the blue. Whatever the weather, the sky sits behind it unchanged, present.
When feeling unsettled I remember this too. It’s from this place we can regain calm, balance and confidence to open up freely.
Often when trying to communicate I let emotion take over. My heart storms ahead, I struggle to do anything without expression; in some ways this can be helpful but in others it gets lost in translation- what I want to say just not coming out or across the way I’d like.
Am I heard at all?
The right people hear you and often those who don’t are in a place where they are unable to hear.
We all see things and perceive them differently. It blew my mind many years ago when somebody said to me nobody has the same version of you in their mind. What, I thought? Surely that face that looks back at me each morning in the mirror is what everybody sees?
It’s funny as I’ve always disliked hearing my own voice until just recently but now, I don’t mind it at all. And that is because in time, very slowly I’ve created the space to love myself a little more. This can be hard to do after a lifetime of self-doubt and criticism. But Mindfulness enables us to come back to this moment and be with what is here now, without all those judgements and in time the freedom arises.
As time passes and the sun now risen, I dip in and out of thought writing as I go. They sky now completely masked with the palest of grey fluffy clouds very subtle smears of blue lie in the background. To fresh eyes the colour of blue unknown. Isn’t this true for most of us? We don’t know what lies beneath the surface, yet we make assumptions then perceive things in a certain light.
If I’m honest I feel lost much of the time but now realise this is part of it, it’s discovering and journeying on the way. The problem is when we don’t listen, we get lost once more. When we don’t listen to what we know is right those lessons come back again and again until we learn them.
Why do we not have enough trust in ourselves to be brave? To feel the fear and do it anyway? Is that helpful long term?
The sky remains unchanged amidst the weather, the bad weather comes, along with the good and the unknown but it remains present and each and every-time it’s ok.
We often get lost when we allow ourselves to be carried away into the storms. Or cling on to the sunshine. For if we allow each to pass, we remain still enjoying it all a little more, leading us to where we are meant to be.
When you find something that truly lifts you, makes you feel alive, my advice is this - grab hold of it with both hands and go for it.
'Your heart is free, find the courage to follow it!'
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