Day 143: Detachment within conversations and language judgments

Recently I have been working with a friend from China a lot, we have been sharing living space and assisting each other with our schedules. But yesterday there was a situation which I have noticed before in my life, but which I have never truly directed effectively.

So at one point she was attempting to teach me some basic Chinese, now when it comes to other languages I am not ignorant at all, for instance while I am not fully fluent, I can speak everything I need in order to exist in Japan or a Spanish speaking country if I was required to do so.

But while she was explaining some different basic things about learning Mandarin, I began to detach in my mind from the conversation, I became tired, yawning a lot, looking at my phone a lot, forcing myself into a distraction of some sort and generally not paying much attention to what she was saying, which in and of itself  is pretty disrespectful.

This has happened before many times in my life, and it is a reaction process in my mind that happens automatically whenever a person is introducing a new topic to me that I am not familiar with in my life experience, and/or do not have a passion for. Its like in my mind I know that I will have to really pay attention to take on board what this person is saying at this moment, and if I have not experienced the point, or have no passion for it, then my mind almost seems to cut off my ability to listen, like invisible ear plugs are in my ears.

I will be just nodding my head, and making random agreeing noises at different points while the person is talking. Then at some point in the explanation, the person will say something like "Do you know what i mean?" and that is the moment that the extent of my minds reaction becomes clear, as I will usually say something like "Sorry what? Can you say that again". Then even when the person repeats it again, I will say something like "ah right, I see cool", when really I do not see at all, because I have already accepted and allowed my mind to detach from the persons explanation. Then once I realise what's happening, in my mind I attempt to cover it over, so that I don't seem stupid or disrespectful, by just saying something like "ah right, I see cool" which is complete self-deception, ego and attempting to manipulate the person to see me in a certain way.


I have seen a variety of consequences in my life from not paying attention to a person explaining new information to me that I'm not familiar/and or passionate about. One time I remember my boss telling me about the details of completing an assignment, and because I felt the assignment was by itself pointless, I reacted in my mind during his explanation, so I detached from actually integrating what he was saying. The result was that I missed a vital point of the assignment, because I was not here breathing in full self-awareness standing equal to what the person was saying and thus the task at hand, so essentially I failed the assignment, or just scraped by, barely managing to complete it and doing so in a flawed manner.

Also it is interesting to note in relation to this whole point that came up with my Chinese friend, that while I find China an interesting country, when it comes to Asian countries in my mind, I have always defined China as not being as interesting as Japan. So I am thus not as passionate about anything that comes from China as I am about Japan, including the language.

There are so many points that I like about Japan: the countries history, Samurai, mythology, intergartion of technology in their society, the films/animes, the Yakuza, some of my favourite film directors and music composers, martial arts, Ninjas, the food, the sound of the language, Japanese cars, the politeness of the people etc. So its a very long list, yet in comparison, when it comes to China it is really only Bruce Lee, Chinese food, a little bit of history and economic points that I have defined in my mind as being interesting to me about China. Which for the most part is fine to like certain things about certain countries, but why am I using that as a justification to not listen effectively to a point in relation to a country I'm not interested in as much?

Also there is historically a well documented hostile rift between Japan and China, which I am finding out a lot more about recently, but this also seems to be a contributing factor of having judgements towards the Chinese language and detaching from the explanation of the Chinese language from my friend. Its like I have taken that hostility towards China on as myself in some way, which is really stupid, completely limiting and unacceptable. I mean if you consider that other then English, Japanese and Spanish are my main languages, but still I can say a lot of basic "hellos and thank you's" in a lot of languages, like: French, German, Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese, Afrikaans, Russian etc. But I literally could not say a single word in Chinese until my friend explained it, so clearly there is some points of separation here that I need to investigate and correct, to expand myself so as to live what is best for all in all moments, so join me in my next blog as I walk self-forgiveness and self-commitment statements in relation to these points.