Naming feeling

This BBC article about the Positive lexicography project is about untranslatable words, or rather, words for which we have no english equivalent. 

(Note, the list of languages and themes on the lexicography project is scrollable, but I found I have to click on one of the languages or themes first for that to be possible)

The article suggests there are advantages to naming the feelings for which at present we have no words.  One such advantage is “a richer more nuanced way of seeing ourselves”. If we feel the things mentioned in that piece, we already have that richness, but there is something about being able to name them, share them which does add to that. 

One probably has, futhermore, to connect with a native speaker to ask for clarification of a term, or, because the lexicography has no sound, to ask how to pronounce it.  If I wanted to better understand what Sehnsucht ("life longings, intense desire for alternative paths and states"), or how to pronounce Wú wéi ("to ‘do nothing,’ acting in accordance with the Tao, being natural and effortless") that is what I would do. That experience in itself is enriching because it requires a connection, a sharing, an asking for help and of giving it. 

It is I notice, the apparently small even mundane things like the asking and giving of assistance, things that go barely noticed, barely acknowledged for their import, that in fact have it.

Some of these words, point, says the piece to hints for deep well-being. What wealth is contained in for instance Sukha (Sanskrit – "genuine lasting happiness independent of circumstances")?

Much wisdom is connected to the idea of the transience of things and our relation to that. Mono no aware, represented by cherry blossom, is apparently the Japanese term for the melancholy sense that transience invokes in us. It reminds me of tango music.

Wabi-sabi is another related, Japanese word we don’t have, meaning:  "imperfect and aged beauty, a ‘dark, desolate sublimity’."   

Footnote:  Wabi sabi is connected to the header photo of this blog I suppose.  That is a photo of the intertidal zone and mudflats of the Forth river looking towards Grangemouth, a very industrial area of Scotland.  And yet, there was something beautiful about that view on that day, nature accommodating even that industrial desolation.   I was standing on the edge of  a very beautiful meadow with wildflowers all around:

There were groves of what I think is sea buckthorne which I am fairly sure I have tasted in ice cream in this area:

Those photos were taken during a harum-scarum not-really-planned exploration of Kinneil Nature Reserve which ended less romantically in that the path through bushes in which I was dragging my bike petered out.  The attempt to escape increasingly unruly nature led to my falling down the high bank of a mostly dry river, the bike following precipitately thereafter.  The undignified, ever-imprudent heap of me was delighted to be ignored by various other wanderers and also pleased not to have broken anything:

The art of kintsugi is another word for which we have no direct translation. It is the practice for repairing broken items with a gold mixture, drawing attention the flaw while emphasising really the frailty of the world and ourselves in it and the fact that such wear and tear is natural and part of history and identity. It is more than honest. It is a frank acknowledgement of this difficult fact but it also makes beauty from damage.  For me this must be one of the greatest arts. I imagine it can be applied in many ways, not only in pottery or through lacquer.

These concepts all seem to be connected.  Some of them are famous and long-standing. Sukha for example is part of Buddhism. The idea appears over and over from, in the west, at least Epictetus onwards and probably long before in the east. I love the idea that just a word contains this wisdom passed from person to person in no material form. That is why I think recognising and capturing these feelings in a word, is an art.

Arguably one of the greatest benefits of this project is that these words, as Lomas says “can help us articulate whole areas of experience we’ve only dimly noticed.”

If we can identify specific emotions we can develop better strategies for coping with life. I find that plausible. Identifying difficult emotions first of all means recognising we are not alone in them. That goes quite some way towards resolving the problem. And if we are not alone in them, someone has probably had some ideas of how to deal with them. If one has noticed these things, then it is perhaps not so difficult to try to find and apply those solutions. Besides, there seems to be proof that using "emotion granularity" this way can be useful in difficult and in neutral circumstances.

Apart from that I just like it when I discover a new word for a feeling. I think I enjoy the feeling more.  I think that enjoyment is somehow linked to the idea that if there is a name for the feeling, others have it too.

Dancing tango dispenses even with that though.  We can just sense from within the couple those many complex, unnameable  things that are happening.  There are explicit things that pass between the couple - a smile sensed or the slight pressure of a hand meaning, perhaps "Everything's fine".  I say explicit though even some of these things go unobserved by others.  But as to the other things that pass between them, well,  if we could say them,  I guess we wouldn't dance them in a real dance.