I arrived in Paris a few days ago and will be staying for a few months. I've written before about my experiences in France, especially in regard to language and trying to find a balanced way to share a reality.
My experience so far has been different from the one I described in my last post. This is probably partially because I have been jetlagged like crazy. I'm walking around the city and my main reaction is that it is comfortable and accessible and natural. I may get lost and not know the best route to get where I'm going, but that's not a big deal.
I'm also speaking French for the smaller exchanges - buying a coffee, baguette or groceries. In these exchanges, I try to answer questions instead of just caving and saying I don't understand. Like the day I arrived. I had slept 2 hours when I first arrived in Paris, then I woke up with a completely unwanted second wind that was entirely related to daylight and had nothing to do with my mind or body being ready to interact with the world, let alone in a different language.
But I went out anyway. Because the weather was nice and I had missed Paris since my last visit. I stopped in a coffeeshop to get a coffee and asked for an iced cafe latte, adding 'it's possible?' because ice is not common over here. The barista assured me it was possible and then asked if I wanted ______ in my latte. I don't like any extra stuff in my latte so I said no. And he looked at me, very curiously and kindly. Eventually, he appeared to make an executive decision and began making my coffee. It was very good. Only later did it occur to me that he may have been asking me what kind of milk I wanted in my latte.
The difference between this time and the last couple times I've been here, is I feel like I have time to figure things out. Time to learn. Time to figure out how and what I want to say. Time to figure out what is being said around me.
The thing that always caused me stress was when I felt like I was supposed to speak perfectly right away. I was supposed to be able to understand everything that was said to me. And this pressure that I put on myself made it so that I felt I couldn't say anything, couldn't understand anything. If I was dealing with absolutes of language, I was definitely leaning toward the lower end of the scale.
That's the problem with absolutes. If we are thinking in this way, we feel we have to identify with one absolute or another, when our reality is actually somewhere in the middle. When I recognize my capacity in speaking and understanding, I can start from there and work at getting better. If I fall into absolute thinking, I have to ascribe to 'understanding nothing' and I will just rely on what has always worked for me in the past (English) and not try to find a different way to interact.
And beyond the absolute thinking that I need to speak fluent French to be understood, there was the absolute thinking that language was the only way to be connected. I was actually thinking this way despite many experiences where I felt very connected to people who don't speak my language. Connected through feeling, humor or shared experiences.
The other night I was at a small party, the only native english speaker in a room full of French people. I laughed harder than I have in a long time. It is possible that I spoke only five or six french words all night. It is also possible that they were all curse words.
