No, this isn’t about the 5 Languages of Love, so stay with me please.
I have a desire to be multilingual, so I purchased an annual subscription to a language app on my phone. I have been at it almost everyday for about 4 months straight, and what an experience it has been. Every time a new concept is introduced to me, I struggle because my mind is intensely brainwashed by English, my native language. Not only is it challenging to learn the vocabulary of a new language, but to allow one’s mind to adjust to a completely different grammar system takes the challenge to a whole different level. It’s not that I am consciously resisting learning a different language, but the rules of English (as confusing and inconsistent as they can be) are what I’ve been immersed in since birth.
Funny thing about English is…
It is now accepted (by many) as the most important language of today. It has nothing to do with it being a better language than others. It’s not even because it makes more sense than other languages. It isn’t even the most sophisticated language. However, the modern expectation is for most people to learn English and learn it well. The reason is rooted in the covert violence of elitist colonialism. The British Empire took a “by any means necessary” approach to make sure that English made its way all over the world.
As per usual, white people be white peopling, hence why English has a certain vibration to it.
It has gotten so popular that native English speakers, especially in America, look down on those who can’t seem to get a handle on the English language. English dialects are often seen as subpar and non-native speakers are often wrongly perceived as less educated. How many times have you met someone who knew multiple languages already before they started learning English? No wonder it is so challenging for me to expand my brain to become the multilingual person I know I’m meant to be.
I know I asked you to hang in there with me and here’s why.
Just as learning a new language like Spanish or Mandarin requires us to create new neural pathways, the same applies when learning a new approach to relating to others. Training our minds to think differently and to apply new tools isn’t easy, because we have to completely take a reset from what we have been doing our whole life. In many ways, we will have to choose to walk away from what we were doing before. We will no longer live in the fantasy where we let Western pop culture determine how we speak the language of love, a language that is new for so many of us. We are not only learning new relationship vocabulary, but we are integrating new systems as well.
This means, we will sometimes find ourselves doing things on auto-pilot and we will have to pivot. We will lovingly correct ourselves when we see ourselves unconsciously resisting the beautiful harmony that we desire in our interpersonal connections. We will have to remind ourselves of our goals and desires and remain dedicated to changing the way we treat ourselves and others. We will build stronger love muscles that benefit us, and our loved ones. We won’t do what our parents did, because we are not them. We won’t regurgitate the same things society has taught us, because the shit doesn’t work. We won’t let any external system decide for us what love should look like. We will release ourselves from the competitive, scarcity focused version of love that we have been introduced to. We will pivot from guilt, shame, imbalance and unspoken expectation. Instead, we will allow the deepest parts of our souls speak the language of love to us. And we will listen.
For richly melanated people, this is how we begin to decolonize our relationships.
