The Marvelous Ache of Being Alive
How we talk about things shapes how we think about them.
This is something I stress with my students again and again.
When I can tell by their blank faces that they don’t understand, I ask if they’ve ever lost a big game and their coach said, “I’m so proud of you. You are all winners in my eyes.”
Or if they’ve ever won a big game and the coach declared, “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
I add that when something big happens in our lives, we can choose to frame it as “the thing that ruined my life” or “the wake-up call that saved me”.
To really drive the point home, I ask if they’d rather be someone else’s “better half” or their “ball and chain”?
Suddenly, my students get that the words we use matter, often in ways that are so subtle, they are easy to miss.
Like how 75% of the Cherokee language is verbs—action words. Doing. Being. In the world. With the world.
Only 30% of English is verbs. It relies heavily on nouns—on things, people, places.
Can you feel the difference?
I don’t speak German, but it seems to me that one of the things the German language does better than most is to captures states of being. Like schadenfreude, that icky, sticky feeling of getting pleasure from someone else’s misfortune.
Or Weltschmerz, a feeling of melancholy and world-weariness, which names so much right now.
I just learned a new German word—fernweh—which is literally translated as “far pain” or “far sickness.”
Falling somewhere between wanderlust and homesickness, it’s a longing for somewhere else. The siren call of a horizon. The ache of not there yet.
Fernweh captures what I am feeling so much of the time. The hunger for the numen of unfamiliar (and often wild) places. The ready to roam, to live the good verbs.
I came across another word this week: emaho. It’s a Tibetan exclamation of wonder, joy, amazement. It’s a yes, this! How wonderful!
And isn’t it so much easier to experience amazement when we roam? Is it any surprise, then, that I imagine I need to itch my fernweh in order to get to emaho?
But that’s what I have to keep reminding myself—I don’t need to leave where I am to live a marvelous life. I can be in awe, right where I am.
It happened to me this week. I went to the chapel at the monastery across the street from where I live.
And the light.
It was gentle, luminous.
Emaho.
Emaho.
Here is enough.
Wherever we are is always enough.
And . . . .
My wild altar is packed. Ready to go to Montana today.
From the way she’s started to glow the last few days, I believe she’s as filled with fernweh as I am.
Ready, aching even, to be in the world. The marvelous, wonderful world.
Living the good verbs.
Together.