I woke up today with nothing particular to do. P*s at his first day of work in a long while, on a Saturday of all days, the sun is shining, and I´m sat here on my sunny terrace with time to spare. This is a positive take on what´s seeming more and more like a rather lackluster year-and-a-half spent still living in Granada. The days are so simliar sometimes they blend together and I find myself wondering where entire months have gone. Sure, I can look closely and see all the amazing experiences I´ve had and people I´ve met, see the mountains we´ve literally and figuratively climbed, the beaches we´ve camped on and continued to haunt for entire summers. But the bigger picture, the one that comes to me on days of extra free time (too much time to think!), often confuses me - I see many days or even months spent in confusion, time spent lost in foreign languages and trapped inside myself like a child. I see a young woman who´s often so insecure as to push people away by instinct, keeping them at arm´s length, while paradoxically looking for only a little recognition or reward for simply being herself.
Maybe this need for appreciation I´ve got is innate or human; surely it´s got something to do with my mother; but nearing 30 years of age feels like I´m on the edge of a cliff. Do I jump in heart-and-soul to the decision I made 2 (or 3??) years ago, to travel the world and not put my feet down until I feel truly at peace? Doing that would mean that I eventually must invent what I´m lacking now - some sense of permanence in a foreign land, some kind of HOME - but can people really do that? More importanly, could I? I´ve spent my twenties a bit differently than a lot of people, but what are the products of my sacrifices (family and friends, familiarity and my own culture)? What have I been so eager to set aside who I am, in exchange for...what?
The answer to this has to be that I´ve gained things, learned things, on my journey of living abroad. I´m taking my blog in the direction of these "lessons" that I´ve picked up since leaving the States, and today´s blog is about something I´ve learned to do quite recently.
I´ve learned to listen, and I´ve learned to hear. After several months when I first arrived in Granada, I always walked around town, earphones plugged into ipod. Then one day, after reading an internet article on "noticing" and how you can change your luck by being more spontaneous and breaking normal routines, I conducted an experiment. I unplugged. All at once, I was tuned in to the people I pass every day on my way to work. You can hear so many conversations and sounds in any given walkabout in Granada - lost tourists, people arguing in any language, new lovers´whispers and giggles, young, fresh backpackers unashamed to marvel out loud at things they never dreamed they´d see. I wondered that first day how I´d ever made my way to work without this. It literally puts a smile on my face to marvel at the sweet, confusing music that is a foreign (to me) language. my brain activates and engages my ears; I try to decipher first the hand gestures and the body language, then I take in the rising and descending tones - are they joking or ranting, arguing or making small talk? Somehow by putting all this together, I formulate the little life stories that happen ever day in Granada, the things that to me are the color of human civilization itself - relayed through linguistic communication. It´s probably very far from accurate, my interpretation of what the people are saying, but that doesn´t really matter. I feel relief when I´m hearing or listening to another language and there´s no real pressure to understand everything (to the contrary, it´s quite unnerving if you need to understand). Walking to work becomes an escape when you put so much attention on the external.
That´s a lesson I´ve learned that I couldn´t have experienced had I not left the States. What was the point in studying linguistics if my future was only in the U.S. of A, where principally only ONE language is spoken? Recalling these little gems of experience make me feel a whole lot better about my decision to move so far away from home. I´m going to recall them more often :)
