Lost in translation
Reflections on finding language for new frontiers
I am writing this as I await my return flight to Johannesburg at Sao Paolo airport. After spending two weeks in Brazil as a non-Portuguese speaker, language is on my mind.
Very few people in Brazil speak or understand English. So whenever I ventured out on my own, communication usually involved hand gestures, broken Spanish (which is only slightly helpful), and frustration.
I reflected on how this is similar to another communication challenge I’ve been experiencing: trying to find language to describe our current state and the value I have to offer in ways that resonate with potential clients.
Too often, I feel like I did this week in Brazil — as if the meaning and essence of my message are getting lost in translation. The challenge is multi-layered:
- Over the past 2 years, I’ve had transformative experiences that have changed how I show up in the world and how I think about and embody my work. I realised, among other things, that I have mainly lived cut off from my body for most of my life, and rediscovering the joy and power of integrating the mental, spiritual and physical has been transformative. Incorporating this new awareness into my work and “voice” has been challenging, largely because I felt like I was sounding too “woo woo” or fluffy. This leads to the next point … but before I go there … it says a lot about where we are when we look at what is defined as woo woo. Whenever the conversation shifts towards the sacred, the balancing of masculine and feminine energies, or using our subtle senses it gets labeled as woo woo. Why? Ok, onto the next point …
- Letting go of the fear of judgment and external validation. I realised that I would stay stuck as long as I cared too much about what others thought. This is a pretty old ego pattern, so dealing with it has taken time. I am still a work in progress much freer than before.
- Forming new relationships. A particularly painful part of this transition is that some relationships don’t survive the shift. This is true not only of professional relationships, but also personal friendships.
- Communicating what I don’t yet have language for. My friend Mirjam and I created an Embodied Waysfinding journey. The marketing process has been a steep learning curve. Trying to find the language to describe something that is still taking shape, that sits in a new frontier that we haven’t been to yet ourselves, but that we KNOW is what the world needs, has been quite a challenge. We have probably changed our messaging 20 times. Circling around and around … who is it for, how would they describe this “time between worlds”, and how do we describe the value of a journey where we can’t promise tangible outcomes but we know participants will be transformed? I’ve seen many others describe similar challenges on LinkedIn; it’s like many of us who work on the edges are struggling with the same thing.
Which leads me back to where I started. I think the times we are in have outgrown our language. The available words and phrases feel tainted by old meanings or simply too narrow. We need more verbs, fewer nouns. Words that don’t de-animate the world and strip the enchantment out of the unknown. This is probably why I have found more wisdom in poetry recently than in the writing of complexity theorists. Poetry seems to be the only language broad enough to hold space for the times we are in.
I’m not sure I’ve found it yet. I, too, am finding my way.
If you’re interested in joining our Waysfinding journey to see what emerges when you tap into the often-forgotten wisdom of your body … you can sign up here: https://mirjamchristinehope.com/embodied-waysfinding/.
We start 22 January 2025 and would love to have you.
