I learned Spanish last, just when I came to California, I finally decided it’s the missing language.
But when I work in Spanish, there is a lightness that I feel, a lightness and a connectivity. An intimacy very quickly forms through that language. It’s different when I’m speaking in other languages. I was just thinking of that the other day with a French client. Our intellectual prowess, the esprit, is what matters most with this client and others from France. And so, that has to be in the foreground. And there’s something about working in German that concerns being well-founded in data and being serious about what you know and what you don’t know.
And I can often notice other changes in my being when working with different languages. Even right now, my face changes when I think in German versus when I’m in Latin mode.
So, there is such richness. We are so blessed, those of us who’ve had the opportunity—often at very high cost—to move around the world and be adopted by or adapt to different cultures. The enrichment that the international experiences have caused and generated in our being is priceless.
And it better be priceless, because it came at a cost. It came at the cost of considerable effort, of learning things, of always moving around, and of being scared at the borders. In my case, the cost was stateless for five years and still managing to come out the other side. So, I feel extraordinarily privileged, in essence, to have the ability to connect with anyone at any time because of my international fluidity.
I think this fluidity in my being has been the greatest gift of all during those difficult times.
