Occupé

Complexity is hard to deal with. So we ask easier questions. We model reality with stories and characters. We come up with simplifying numbers to make choices. Everything we think and say is based on assumptions. Under each assumption is another assumption. Till you get to axioms. Statements we regard as accepted or self-evidently true. If we don’t agree on those, it gets progressively harder to agree on the simplified versions higher up the house of cards. I am attempting to burst my English bubble. It’s hard. I love writing, listening and talking. But it is almost all in English. Other languages offer slight twists of perspective. Take the word “Busy”. To me that’s the root. French is occupé. That feels more insidious. Like an occupied country during war time. It’s more like a thesaurus than another language. There is some common ground. But I am still just at the stage where I hear a string of unintelligible, but very sexy, sound when I hear French. I still need to do the deep work to be able to connect. To train my ear. Train my tongue. Train the way I see the world. That feels like rewiring who I am. Just like unwinding prejudice.

Occupied France