Why I Hated Foreign Language (English) And How I Used Catharsis To Start Loving It
An analysis of reasons behind hatred for foreign language and solution to come out of it
In every society there are some people who determine what is acceptable in their society and what is not. These people need not be the wealthiest or the most intelligent or even social activists. They are actually the ones who think not only about the ones of their own character type but for most people in their society. They bring stability to whatever form their society has moulded itself in. They determine the commonly existing morality in their respective societies. In this article I shall refer to such people as X people.
Reasons for different languages and accents
Now whatever form the society has moulded itself in, along with various environmental factors, in general, determine what language they use or at least what accent they have. Now we cannot change the physical environment so basic tendencies arising out of it cannot lead to complete uniformity across the world in relation to language and even if it happens then there will still be non uniformity wrt accent.
Reasons for non acceptance of foreign language
Now coming back to the main question - what causes reluctance in accepting another language. First reason is, it may not be that natural to express our emotional state which normally will be different from those people who are native speakers. For example if a society in which people are not having many suppressed feelings then their language will not have many words which would create sounds that are harsh. Even if they use the same language as others then their accent at least will be soft.
But the main reason for the hatred is non-compliance with the X people. Normally these people would like to be protective of their society and would not like intervention of foreign influence because it is not just about speaking foreign language but doing so is also accompanied by blindly following the foreign culture as well. This causes hatred against their own culture when there is a mismatch which especially is not acceptable by the X people.
Now not everyone living in the society, think about how their whole society will function. They will just think about themselves or at maximum, about their near and dear ones. This leads to subconscious reliance on acceptability from the X people. These X people will be ardent opposer of foreign influence and foreign language which translates to some degree of non-acceptability among other people in the society as well. One thing to note here is by dividing the people into X people and others, I in no way consider one above the other. Everyone equally deserves our love.
How to overcome the hatred?
The question which now arises is, how to overcome this hatred? First step to realise is that hatred is a byproduct of some form of fear in our mind. Talking wrt situation in India, in the past several centuries, the society was suppressed under colonisation. This led to people forming rigid rules to bring stability to the society, a society in which people were not able to express their true needs. This rigidity did not exist always as India is the land where once Kamasutra was written.
Now these rigid rules were then challenged by western culture with the surface element being the English language and hence were not accepted by the X people. But there were people who were either above hatred or had hatred against X people and they accepted English and this created a divide within India. This divide still exists in Indian society. There is divide between Hindi speaking people versus English speaking and at more regional level, between Tamil speaking people versus Hindi speaking people.
Me and catharsis
I personally considered myself, one of X people in charge of maintaining Indian societal norms and hence during my adolescent years had a lot of hatred against English language. But if science and technology (which requires English) and liberal society is the way forward then one should adapt to it. Any kind of resistance to it will not last long and also till the time we have the resistance, we will also be under stress, which is not good. This realisation was the truth that I then used to educate my inner child after doing catharsis. I went back to my childhood days and experienced fears which not relying on people like me in my society, would bring.
One such example is the fear which interest in girls at a younger age would bring. This fear was earlier allayed by subconscious reliance on X people as they had similar feelings (though they never expressed this feeling) and I felt secure in being one of them. I used catharsis to remove fear from incidents where such people showed hatred against English language. But then the need of finding solace with people of my character type was still there in me which was resolved when I went to United States for higher studies and found many people of my character type, speaking in English. Thus the acceptance of the language increased.
Another area where I worked was the fear arising due to instability in marriage which western culture normally brings. This included working upon fears arising due to divorce, pre and post marital affairs etc. Previously I did not accept them. I remembered and engulfed myself in the feeling of hatred and hence fear which arose in me when people close to me showed anger against them who either had a divorce or had pre or post marital affairs. After releasing the emotion, I educated the inner child with the truth that such things can’t be avoided in the current environment due to various factors. Society can still function even when we remove the sacred status given to the institution of marriage. One of the idea which strengthened this belief was believing in theory of evolution which makes institution like marriage not sacred but arising out of need and many of these needs are not valid today. Now it may seem from this work that I blindly followed western culture but reality is not that. I just removed blind hatred against it. I still feel if someone is married then he/she should not take divorce in an impulsive manner but rather should work on marriage and see conflicts as an opportunity for self growth. Only when nothing works out, divorce should be seen as an option.
In conclusion
Thus by working on my fears and then changing my beliefs wherever need arose, I felt more at ease with English. Actually life wants to free us but when we close down to change and hold feelings of hatred then we are losing the opportunity of becoming a better version of ourselves.
This post may not give a feel good experience mainly because I dealt with the causes of division within and across society which may require a person to self introspect. But if everything were so simple then there wouldn’t be any hatred. One has to realise that there are people of different character type and believing in different perspectives but that all are manifestation of one consciousness and hence in the essence everyone is same.
