The Silence in the Words

Hello from Paris! 

It had been five years since I traveled abroad and jet lag hit extremely hard. So much so that, on the taxi ride from the airport to our hotel, I fell asleep in the seat. I’m not one to be able to sleep if there’s any stimuli whatsoever, so when I do sleep like this there’s this almost euphoric sense about it. Anyway, jet lag aside, there is a story from dinner last night that I think is highly relevant. 

I’m here in Paris with my girlfriend and we needed to find dinner. We were both exhausted, and as we walked almost aimlessly we stopped and ate at the first place we found. 

As we were seated, there was a group behind me of six people deep in conversation and also an older couples diagonal to them that were chatting. It was a chorus of words that had only brief bits of slowing down, and yet I was able to focus on my girlfriend’s words without problem. She also noticed that my sense of ease was higher than normal and remarked, “are you at peace because you can’t understand what they’re saying?” She couldn’t have been more right. 

I’ve loved to travel and this is one of the reasons. It is almost impossible for me to turn my ears off at home. I can’t simply not hear what is being said three tables over and once I hear it I process it. Even if I’m conversing with a person across from me, the level of stimuli I’m processing from all around makes it a tiring experience. However, when my brain knows I can’t understand the words, it becomes this silent noise that is simply there and not processed.

There is such a deep level of safety in this. If you don’t have this issue, it’ll be difficult for me to explain to you just how all encompassing of an experience it is to not be able to filter out the world at home, and yet when I’m in a foreign land with a language I don’t know, well, it’s one of the few times I’ll use the phrase, “at peace” when describing myself in a social setting. 

I wish I knew how to emulate this experience at home. Since the start of the pandemic I’ve dreamt about a return to a place like Tokyo where I don’t have to worry about words spoken and most of the locals will assume I don’t know the language. There’s such a peace in that environment. At presentations, when this area of life is brought up, others often recoil at the thought of both not understanding the words and not being able to communicate, but it’s been something I’ve grown fond of and yesterday, at dinner with my girlfriend, it was so obvious that she instantly knew I was at peace.