'The limits of our language become the limits of our inner world.'
The Real Words We Never Learnt
“Words can lift and support someone or cut someone right to the bone.” (Unknown)
Someone asks how you are, an automatic answer comes out as, ‘not too bad,’ ‘fine,’ ‘stressed,’ or ‘yeah, I’m good.’ Someone asks what is wrong, and the best you can manage is “I’m angry” or “I’m over it.” Not because that is the whole truth of what you’re feeling, those are the only words you were ever learnt to express them.
We were taught spelling, maths, grammar and a thousand things out in the world. Almost none of us were taught the language of what goes on inside of us. We grew up fluent in everything except our own feelings.
A Child’s Handful of Words
A small child has only a few words for the whole of their inner world. Happy. Sad. Mad. Scared. It is a beautiful start, and for far too many of us it is also very close to where the learning stopped. We carry a young child’s emotional vocabulary around inside a grown adult’s life.
Our feelings kept growing even when our words for them did not. A whole rich, layered inner world, disappointment, grief, loneliness, longing, shame, gets crushed down into the few blunt words we do have. Angry. Frustrated. I’m fine. It’s like trying to paint a sunset with three crayons.
The Boy in the Special Class
I know what it is to live with a limited vocabulary, because I lived it as a young boy. I grew up in a Greek-speaking household, talking Greek all day with my mother, father and grandmother. Greek was my default, my first language of the heart. When I started at an English-speaking Australian school, my English was limited. I didn’t go to kindergarten, because my parents could not afford it. I was placed in a special class at primary school. I remember seeing the word ‘Auntie’ and the teacher asked me to pronounce the word ‘Auntie’. I said, ‘U-ti.’ The look on the teacher’s face said it all.
For years I carried a heavy self-limiting belief that I was somehow cursed for being Greek, I kept finding evidence for it everywhere I looked. What I understand only nowadays is that it was never about being less than anyone. I was not short of intelligence; I was simply short of them in the one language that the classroom counted. My vocabulary was rich, only not in English, and because I could not yet express myself in that room, I was misjudged, and worse, I began to misjudge myself. That is one aspect how a limited vocabulary can affect a person. It can quietly write a false story about who they are.
One Word, Many Loves
Here is a beautiful example of what a richer vocabulary makes possible. In English we have a single, overworked word for love. We say, “I love pizza,” “I love my children,” and “I love you” all with the very same word and trust the other person to work out which one we mean.
The ancient Greeks, my own heritage, did it differently. They had several distinct words for love, four main ones and, in some counts, as many as seven or eight. Agape, the selfless, unconditional kind. Eros, the passionate and romantic. Philia, the deep love of true friendship. Storge, the quiet, instinctive love of family. Because they had a separate word for each, they could feel each one clearly, name it, and offer it for exactly what it was. The word gave the feeling somewhere to live.
Words Let Us Express, Feel, and Connect
When we do not have the words, three things quietly suffer. We cannot fully express what is happening in us, so others are left guessing. We cannot feel it clearly, because a feeling with no name stays a vague, shapeless weight. And we cannot truly connect, because real closeness is built on being able to say what is honestly going on inside, and to understand it in someone else. A poor vocabulary does not only limit our words. It limits our reach into ourselves and toward each other. Please remember here, this is not a judgement, we all do the best we can with the knowledge that we have today.
What We Cannot Name, We Cannot Handle
This is exactly what Jim Rohn was pointing at. A limited vocabulary leaves us with a limited ability to see and to express. And a feeling we cannot name does not politely disappear. It goes into ‘The Tip,’ the cluttered dumping ground of the mind, unlabelled and unsorted, and from there it leaks out like a short fuse, numbness, anger that never quite fits the moment that sets it off. These unnamed feelings end up quietly running the show, precisely because we never gave them a name, we could get hold of and understand.
Naming It Begins to Calm It
Here is the quiet magic, and it is far simpler than people expect. The moment you put a word to a feeling, it begins to settle. When you can say to yourself, this is not really anger, this is disappointment, or this is hurt, or this is shame, something in you steadies. The feeling stops being a vague, overwhelming storm and becomes a specific thing you can actually hold and work with.
You are not trying to get rid of the feeling. You are simply meeting it honestly, and meeting it starts with knowing its name.
Who Has Come Into Your Guest House?
In my book I share a poem by ‘Rumi,’ who pictures us as a ‘guest house,’ with each emotion a visitor arriving at our door. When something stirs inside of us, ask, ‘who has come into my guest house today?’ You cannot welcome a guest, or hear what they came to tell you, until you first recognise who is standing at the door. Naming the feeling is that recognition. It is how you stop reacting blindly to a stranger and start listening to a guest.
Growing the Vocabulary
The good news is that emotional vocabulary can be grown at any age, the same way any vocabulary is. Jim Rohn taught himself two to three new words a day. You can also learn two or three new feelings a week. Go past “angry” and look for what is underneath it, hurt, powerless, afraid, ashamed, despair, betrayal and more. Go past “fine” and find the truer word, lonely, tired, flat, uncertain. One honest question at the end of each day: ‘what did I actually feel today, beneath the word I reached for?’
Every new word is a new tool, and every feeling you can name is one less feeling running you from the shadows. This is quiet, practical work, and it moves you steadily out of the confusion of ‘The Tip’ and toward the clarity of ‘The Garden.’
A Question to Sit With
The next time you are about to say ‘I’m fine’ or ‘I’m angry,’ pause for just a moment and ask yourself:
‘What am I really feeling, underneath the word I usually reach for?’
You cannot heal what you cannot name. You cannot fully share what you have no words for. The moment you find the true word for it, you have already begun.
Have a great week,
Michael
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