Language is the way we bring existence to our lives. That is why I think it is magical to discover words that exist in one language and not another, creating feelings that an entire community can or cannot experience.
The story of a tiny village in central Africa comes to mind. In the language spoken there, the word sadness did not exist. This village, like many others in Africa, had been the victim of absolute poverty, hunger, war, displacement and, of course, AIDS. More than half of the village was infected and several researchers noticed how mourning never ended in this population in particular. The lives of the widows and children were still covered by an invisible veil of sorrow that would not go away. After inquiring, they realized that the word sadness did not exist in their language and they created it, describing the meaning, the magnitude of the feelings associated with sadness and then, the mourning, the true grief of each of the inhabitants began. They had discovered in language a door to let out their pain, by experiencing sadness, a feeling that was now possible, they could mourn and carry on with their lives without that invisible veil that no one seemed to understand.
Today I learned a new word in Portuguese from a friend. Saudade. It is the feeling of desire for something or someone you had but is no longer there, for a reason we know they will not come back. Even deeper yet, Saudade refers to something we would have wanted in our lives and we think will never come. It is a word that comes close to a feeling similar to longing, but it is even deeper and has a connotation of loss.
However, and here is the heresy for today, Saudade describes that feeling of emptiness without sadness or without making that someone or the situation wrong, without thinking that it is a bad thing that it or he/she is no longer there, or does not exist. That is to say, experiencing the emptiness from the perfection of emptiness itself. Saudade goes away or ceases to exist when we approach that certain something or someone or we fill the emptiness with their presence. That is to say, how can I miss what I am bringing into my life?
This heresy is an invitation to discover the magical meaning of Saudade: experience based on emptiness infinite appreciation for what we are not, for what we do not have, without associating any judgment with the situation, without thinking that it is bad for a person to have died, or to be far away, that we no longer have that job, understanding that everything is perfect and feeling the emptiness based on love. Therefore, Saudade is a clean expression of love that understands even the perfection of the absence of our loved one, and that in turn teaches us that we cannot miss what is in our heart, because we have already brought it into our lives.
I will continue to experience this new feeling of Saudade that my friend Joseph brought into my life through language.
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