Written by: Jinpa Caroline Smith, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Sometimes, however hard we try, we are just not heard. As we get older we suspect that perhaps, with some people, we may never share a language. How do we make sense of painful broken communication, and what can we do about it?
Genesis 11:1-9
The Tower of Babel
11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, [a] they found a plain in Shinar [b] and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel [c]—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
The Bible, New International Version
Excellent stories have a wealth of rich seams to mine, and whilst my interpretation of this story serves my current purpose, this story is worth reading again with a variety of hats on.
In my reading, it seems that the Tower of Babel was created in order for God to separate people out, cause disharmony and arrest their efforts to work together to do the ‘impossible’. People scattered and they all developed their own languages. And then of course, they had to build bridges in order to communicate.
Communication skills: not the whole story
Communication skills can only get you so far. Don't get me wrong; I’m a drama teacher and in a relationship with a neurodivergent brainiac, so I am right behind supporting people in developing good communication, including active listening, body language, tone, and ways of structuring sentences to express ownership, and no blame-shame-shouting. The recent movement in non-violent communication would have annoyed God even more if he had heard it, if this story is anything to go by. And if we sign up for improving our communication skills, we have a very good chance of getting along with the people close to us, and improving our relationships.
But what happens when the gulf between you and the other person is so big you can't see a way to cross it? If the people calling to each other from either side of the void are willing to make the effort to learn bridge-building skills, then perhaps the gulf is crossable. I often say to my clients something along the lines of: “I know you wish that this lover/wife/father/friend/sister/work colleague would think like you do, and see you as you would wish to be seen.” In fact you wish they were Jay Gatsby:
“He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced – or seemed to face – the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Speaking Chinese
But perhaps you are asking them to, metaphorically, speak Chinese. You speak Chinese fluently. They do not. It does not matter how many times you repeat yourself, slow your words down, or give explanations, examples and illustrated diagrams, they simply do not understand a word you are saying. Maybe they're willing to go away and learn to speak Chinese in order to be able to communicate with you, and maybe they are not. Maybe they do not have the inclination, skills, or time to learn a complicated new language that is so very different from their own. Perhaps you are willing to teach them Chinese, but they do not want to learn. (Of course, if I'm working with a Chinese speaker let's say the language is Swahili or Welsh – you get the picture). If the willingness to speak Chinese is there for one or both parties, then developing a shared communication is a realistic and hopeful aim; the bridge can be built. But what if it just isn’t possible? What should you do then?
Metaphors: Protection from bad weather
One of my clients, let’s call her Sara, who dreaded communicating with her sister, but valued the relationship, not least because she valued the relationship with her nephews and nieces, developed a really useful tool during coaching. To prepare for her sister’s calls or visits, Sara had, in one of our sessions, built herself a very strong sowester: you know those yellow oil skin coats that they wear in bad weather when the North Sea is lashing and the boat is sideways and waves are plummeting over our heads. There is also a shaped matching hat held on with string. Anyway, Sara had ‘built’ one of these during one of our creative journeys as a way to protect herself from her sister. Her sister was unable and unwilling to speak Chinese, so Sara would take her sowester from the hook, put it on, fasten it tightly, put on the hat, tie the string, and pick up the phone. Protected against stormy weather she could face her sister’s judgement and criticism as it just ran off the sides of her sturdy coat, like the storm. This was her way of meeting her sister on the bridge. No Chinese required.
There are lots of times when the gulf of misunderstanding is simply too big, too deep and too hurtful. Perhaps the person who does not speak Chinese abused you, or was someone who stood by when you were abused, or simply has such a different worldview there's no common ground, and this has caused ongoing pain and suffering. If the relationship is one we still want, perhaps we can all develop a similar metaphorical tool to Sara to find ways to protect ourselves from further pain; to find ways to keep our boundary and our distance whilst still interacting in a way we can manage.
“But they just don’t get me!”
However, the problem remains that they don't speak Chinese and that inside, we simply can't handle it. It just hurts too much that they don't get us, see us, hear us. How do we live with knowing we are so utterly misunderstood? There are a few things we can do:
1. We can just live with it and suffer. It is so difficult we may be estranged from this person, or from our family, and feel unable to ever speak to speak to them or see them again. But that does not mean we don't carry the wound. If we live with it and continue to suffer, we continue the cycle, even if it is in our own bodies. Yet for many this option is their unexamined habit. The buddha said: “Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”
2. We can try to find an alternative bridge, to bypass some of our pain. How can we build a bridge that crosses to some understanding of why they don't speak Chinese, and why we have been so maligned and feel so misaligned? Another client, Jane, had so many unspoken and unacknowledged family stories of suffering in silence and living with abuse. Generational trauma and pain had been handed down from unknowing sufferer to unknowing sufferer until it reached her. This is a case where the story is bigger than us. Is there a chink there where we can identify with the other? If we can take the sting out of our righteous anger and blame, it may sit more comfortably. It does not mean we have to forgive or forget. It just means we can recognise that the non-Chinese speaker is also suffering and may long to learn Chinese, if they only knew they needed it.
3. The third option is the best one, I think, and both the most difficult and conversely the easiest, once we get on board with it. It is more about us and our excellent Chinese, than about those we wish would speak it. How do we sit, and this is the crux of it, with the discomfort and gut-wrenching unfairness, and find a way to use it for our own growth? Once we feel compassion for the non-Chinese speaker (see above), are we able to feel equal compassion for ourselves? So many of us suffer and then hate ourselves for it. We feel we should be better somehow, bigger, more forgiving. After that awful family dinner when you were suddenly 10 again, or that row when nothing you said got through and you were left bereft and unheard as you slammed the door. That feeling that they really should understand! If only I had said it differently, behaved better. if only they had a lightbulb realisation moment!
But they don’t, so we turn it on ourselves, as the only way to feel in control, and make it our own fault.
The point is, even if we were completely vindicated in some Hollywood movie perfect resolution, complete with deathbed conversion (and it is sadly unlikely this will happen if it hasn’t already), it would not change the ingrained hurt in our sinews, in our deep self. It would not change that habit. This is our work and ours only.
Allowing discomfort
So, I invite you to sit quietly with the feeling of mismatch. One technique is resting meditation. Just take a moment to sit quietly when you get that frustration or furious hollow stomach; notice the feeling of disquiet when you remember the hurts done to you, and locate them in your body, gently. Where is tight, clenched or twisted? Does it have a colour or shape? A sound or smell? What is the pain like? Allow your attention to attend to the pain. Don’t push it away or look for relief and redress in the place it came from. As you notice it, it may dissipate or shrink or feel less unbearable. Some people count it down from ten.
The only place to find relief from another’s lack of understanding is to hear your own voice, in your own unique language; to accept, with grace, that not everybody speaks Chinese. And just be with that.
The Tower of Babel story could also be used as a metaphor for the wonderful variety of languages we all speak and the bridge-building materials available to us. Maybe that is a story for next time.
Jinpa Caroline Smith, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Jinpa Smith is a narrative coach, teacher and writer. But she is also a longstanding Tibetan Buddhist, nomad and survivor of Cptsd. She and lives with chronic pain syndrome a cat. A life of travel, teaching drama and poetry, being a mother to a Quantum Physicist, and exploring life from the spiritual to the sexual to the intellectual, has given her a unique blend of humour, compassion and wisdom. She believes that journey metaphors can be useful, but so can cycles. There is no arrival, and we are all just doing our best to be happy. She works with people across the planet online and in person, rewriting stories and changing habits.
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