Affirmation and Fears

I highly doubt that you guys would remember me writing about how thinking in the different languages actually changed our perception? But today as I was going through my new communications text book, I came across this quote:

"As I learnt to speak, my perspective changed... Speaking the language, I could no longer really hear it. And once inside its protective walls, I began to find it difficult to get out... I had not only learned to speak a language: I had started to think in it. Its questions became my questions, its concepts shaped my responses to new ideas. Its definitions of the parameters of reality became mine."
- Thinking through Communication by Sarah Trenholm page 73 quote 12.

And it became evident to me that people do have an inkling of what is happening around the world. Perhaps it is because I'm more of a linguist who loves languages and how I can understand them more, has led me to start thinking in the different languages. Thus I am having a deeper understanding on why the cultures behave the way they do. In fact, the quote was from a nuclear scientist who merely picked up a defensive lingo used in her field of work and it has already warped her sense of thought to such a high degree. You can only imagine what most of us multi-lingual individuals had to experience in our attempt to master our separate languages.

To master another language requires you to think in that language. And when you do that, your not only exposing yourself to a completely new culture. Your literally changing your mind and personality when you switch over to thinking in another language. I have experienced so many personality changes, it was amazing that I could hide my unstable moments from even the people closest to me. If you ask my family on whether they sensed any changes in me since the day I was born, they would probably say that I'm as stubborn as before and not have noticed many of the changes that have occurred during my transition.

To me, it was highly important to disguise the changes I was going though. Why is it? It's because otherwise I would face rejection from my family. How did I know that I faced rejection? Well it was simple, when I was about 15 years of age I had begun changing. I have two younger brothers and the one whose older noticed the change in me and vehemently started telling me that I was becoming very "fake" or much like an "actor". He was the closest to me and could tell when I had the slightest of personality tweaks. Thus I knew instantly that he cannot accept this new person I was becoming. And since my parents and youngest brother have not noticed this change yet, I decided to maintain a facade to placate him.

Although members of my immediate family probably will never read my blog, I suppose I should let this out into the open so that at least my friends would understand why I sometimes seem like a totally different person in front of my family. I have to behave like the jerk and bastard that they have grown up believing that I am today. When I behave any other way, my brothers will find it very hard to believe that the person they are looking is their brother. It really kind of hurts to have to act in that manner, when you have to pretend to be who your not. And when time went by, I just grew weary of becoming an actor whenever they are at home.

You probably would have heard of people revealing their true colors only when their are with their closest of family, I on the other hand, have to face an even harder task of hiding my true colors at home because of the amount of disbelief. I suppose that because I was kind of a tyrant at home when I was younger, that my brothers can only accept that I must be a bad person who can never change in anyway except for the worse. Well, I'm getting tired of pretending. It's been a full decade since the day I had to hide my true colors, it'd be soon when I will be unable to pretend to be the jerk that I once was and face the horrified expressions of my family. It's been a fun day since I've been alone at home today, I hope you guys enjoy the rest of this lovely Tuesday. Alauz Out!


Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow