What does "te quiero" really mean? Is Polish poorer than Spanish?

           Depending on the time zone the Valentine’s Day has ended or it is still going on. I got used to live mentally in different time zones so it doesn’t matter for me that where I am physically it’s already the 15^th of February. Let it be a Valentine’s post. But it won’t really be about romantic love, or at least not mainly. Although this day is commonly known as the day of lovers, in some countries, including Finland and many Latin America countries, it is also celebrated as the day of friendship. I find it, as many other people, a nicer and less “kitschy” way to spend it because, among other reasons, you don’t feel forced to have your “half-orange” and you can celebrate it with more people and show them that they are important. In Poland we do not spend it that way, maybe it would be nice to introduce it. In fact, I’ve been planning this post for a long time, but I didn’t expect to public it on this day and I wasn’t really going to mark this day in any way, nor with a single post on Facebook or something like that. But about 10 minutes ago I felt today’s a perfect time to write and post it so I will. If I spend this day without love and without friends, I will at least do something I love and write something in the subject. As I said it won’t be really about love, much about friendship and… linguistics. Yes, linguistics, one of the subjects that I love.

              I always admired people who asked what their favourite words in a given language are could give a bunch of examples without hesitate. I was never really thinking about languages in that way and thought that maybe I just don’t cherish them enough if I don’t have my own examples of favourite words. Actually it’s much more easier for me to point words that I detest than those that I love. Maybe it just shows my negativity, but it’s not the topic of this post. Anyway, I know which word, or to be more accurate, which phrase in Spanish is my favourite, the most fascinating and of the deepest meaning for me. It’s te quiero. Surprised? It may seem hackneyed and trivial to some of you, but I will soon prove you it’s not. What I want to enhance here is that I speak all the time about Mexican Spanish and my experience in Mexico. The meanings and collocations may and probably do differ depending on the country especially in Latin America vs. Spain.

             When we, non-Spanish native speakers, learn Spanish, we are taught that te quiero is the equivalent of I love you in English or kocham cię in Polish. Well, it is only in a way. The thing is that natural languages are never responding to each other in a scale 1:1, that is you cannot translate everything so directly and te quiero is exactly one example of it. Together with te quiero we learn te amo and are told that it’s basically the same, but te amo is stronger. It’s still just a surface.

           Kocham cię in Polish (my Mexican friends used to laugh at it because it reminds them of the verb coger – I won’t translate it ;P) is only the expression of a strong affection – between very fond lovers, close family or very close friends. It’s for a very close zone and you really don’t use it often. Actually you are very lucky if you use (and hear) it at all because you may not have anyone you love so much with response or not enough courage and openness to express it.

            I love you in English is used much more widely and commonly because people just don’t treat is as seriously as we treat kocham cię in Polish. Sometimes they almost “throw it” publicly in the air to a mum, a sister or to friends what we can see for example in some American TV shows. We DON’T do it with kocham cię in Poland if we are honest with our feelings and don’t just want to show off. We don’t throw it around, we value it and treat it seriously.

And then there’s a Spanish “equivalent” which is the title of this post. Soon after I came to Mexico, lived some time between Mexican people and made some friends I realized it cannot in any way be the equivalent of kocham cię because I don’t think that people I’ve known for some months as friends would tell it to me. Ok, Mexican people are affectionate, much more open etc., but still I knew it’s not an explanation here. What they meant was just friendship and kind of care. But they were only my guess and it was fascinating to me so I made a Google research. The answers I found was exactly what I thought (1 and 2): te quiero is an affection you feel for your friends, for your family or for your girlfriend/boyfriend. It could be better translated as I care about you. Here comes the question: so in ambiguous cases how do you tell between a friendly te quiero and a romantic te quiero? Well, I have no idea. I hope someone could explain it to me, too. Te amo means real love and you don’t use it often – only to someone you have a romantic relationship with when you really MEAN it, to your close family or a very close friend.

So I got an explanation and I knew that te amo is what kocham cię is Polish, but I was still wondering how the hell I would translate te quiero into Polish? My Mexican friend asked me once exactly the same question and I just had to said her while being a bit ashamed that… there is no translation. She was quite surprised and asked me if we don’t say to our friends in Poland that we love them. Well. No. You can say of course things like “I like you very much”, “You’re important to me”, “You can count on me” etc., but there is no straight translation of te quiero. There is no simple Polish phrase that would contain the whole beautiful meaning of it. To express the same feeling you would need at least one long sentence. That’s why I got so fond of Spanish te quiero. It allows me to express feelings I could have never expressed before. It shows affection and attachment, but they are not very big words and you don’t have to be afraid that the other person will run away or feel ashamed. It’s just so simple, warm and sweet, but not hackneyed as I love you.

But ok, if we lack it in Polish, does it mean that Polish is somehow poorer than Spanish? I swear you it’s not. It is beautiful in languages that each of them has words and phrases that are not easily translatable and explicable in other languages because they contain too much meaning and collocations in native speakers’ minds… Maybe we don’t know how to easily tell a friend what we feel for them, but we certainly know how to call a friend that is special to us. This is przyjaciel.

Przyjaciel is not just an English friend, because you can have many friends. Basically anyone you go for a beer with or only have on your Facebook list is your friend. And it is not amigo either, because amigo is more or less the same as friend in English. We do have in Polish words for this kind of relationship and they would be kolega, kumpel or znajomy (although the last one is more like acquaintance or conocido). But English and Spanish do not have straight equivalents for przyjaciel. Some Polish people overuse it and would call przyjaciel dozens of people in their life, but most people feel the real meaning and save this word for maybe 1, 2 or 4 people. Or even for no-one because they don’t feel there is someone that close for them. It is someone who broke the sometimes tough borderline of being just a friend, gained our deeper trust and got more access to our inner world than most people do. We can tell them our deep emotions, secrets and worries, can truly rely on them and they may feel even like a sister or a brother. And vice versa, of course. I really appreciate we have this word in Polish and I really used it few times in my life. Mostly when I was much younger, didn’t learn the meaning well yet and what I called przyjaźń (friendship) unfortunately ended after some time. That’s why now even if I would like to call someone in that way I’m afraid to do this because I don’t know if they share this feeling… This is how deep meaning it has.

So you see? There is no Polish equivalent of te quiero. There is no Spanish equivalent of przyjaciel. And what is more te quiero is not exactly what you feel for przyjaciel. Because I used and said te quiero in 7 months more times that I used and said przyjaciel during 26 years. All those differences, inexplicable meanings and depths of collocations is one of the things I love about learning and investigating languages and about making friends from different cultures. I hope I was able to share some of this affection of mine with you in this post because sharing my thoughts and feelings is one of the things I love about writing. If you want, please share your thoughts on the topic, say how you see those phrases and add something to my understanding of them because languages are infinite and they are something (including our mother tongue) we'll never learn to the end :). 

There's no way back home because the world is your home

         “You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” – Miriam Adeney

         This is a quote I read some time ago and some of you have probably seen it, too. It describes perfectly what happens when you decide once to leave home and try living in another country or at least another city.

All those Erasmus, AIESEC, Work Abroad, Camp America and all the other countless exchange programs, traineeships, internships, voluntary work. It seems just such a great adventure, a wonderful experience, something nice to put to your CV and to tell about to your friends afterwards. Sounds like so much fun, getting to know the world, making international friends, parties and all that stuff. And it is of course. But that’s not all about it. It is pretty serious, too, so be careful and aware of what you are doing. Because once you decide to do it, there’s no way back. There’s no way back home. You think you do it only once, only for a few weeks or months, but it’s enough, you’re done.

I may be wrong, maybe not for all the people it works like that, most probably it doesn’t because we are different and have different experience. Maybe your first experience abroad was traumatic because you went for example to India, got too much cultural shock and are afraid to try again (sorry for the India example, but I heard real stories like that :D). Well, that happens I guess. But still seeing many of my friends’ experience I know that what I wrote is quite a common true. I have friends who are going through it exactly right know and for the first time in their lives. They left home once, for a few months. And now when coming back home they know that they won’t stay that long. That it became too familiar, too well-known, too boring and that they’re simply stuck there. Once they tried exploring the world they got to know what waits just behind the corner and they want more. Once they left home and made a different place their home for a while, they cannot feel comfortable in their old home again. They miss something. They saw and experience too much. The world is waiting.

But even though they feel like this it may be that finally they will just stay home or at least their home country for good. I have quite many friends that tried living abroad, but in the moment they seem comfortable in one place and don’t seem to change it soon. Maybe they’ve just found their place and it’s good for them. Or maybe not, but they’re not eager to make a drastic change anymore. I understand it well. If I stay in one place too long (let’s say for a few months), I become feeling like stuck. But if I stay a bit longer, I become feeling too used to and comfortable, too.. Because quitting all: a job/a school, a flat, friends, afternoon activities and every little detail of your life and starting all over from scratch is not easy. It’s totally what you call leaving your comfort zone because it’s completely uncomfortable. But for me at the same time it’s completely beautiful and I hope not to get too comfortable too quickly…

Quitting all your previous life and saying goodbye can be hard and stressful (especially moving out and transporting tons of your stuff..), but in the end if you decided to do it, there was some reason for it, you didn’t feel well enough and you wanted something more from life, so you shouldn’t cry THAT much, you’ll survive. And it’s usually a moment when you realized how much you had, how many friends you made and that you’re dear to them. If you had stayed, you probably wouldn’t see it and appreciate it that well so it’s a good side, too. Cry your part and move forward once you decided it.

Moving, travelling or just being about to travel and planning for me, personally, is the time when I feel the most alive, full of energy and fulfilled. At the same time it is so stressful and exhausting, but it is so vibrant! No depression has its place there, only action, step by step, a bus, a check-out, a plane, another bus, a hostel, a plane, changes, changes and motion…

Than starting from scratch in a new place is so much stress, being bombarded by new and getting to know new stuff 24/7… I find it the most difficult part, but the time after you have got through it is totally worth it.

Getting to know a different culture from the inside, drowning in a new reality and then learning to surf in it in a perfect style, trying to remember many new faces and new names of the people that then become your best friends, struggling to buy some bread using a new language that then becomes your principal tool of communication and you realize that you take part without effort even in dirty or absurd conversations between native speakers, trying carefully and with no confidence new strange dishes that then become your daily food, visiting new places that then you know like the back of your hand, feeling like a baby and trying not to get lost while using public transport until you just use it automatically even blindfolded, changing your customs, changing from tourist into a inhabitant, changing yourself… Oh, it just must be experienced, at least once. And then you want more, believe me.

I feel somehow that maybe what I wrote is nothing new and nothing revealing. Or maybe only for me and a few of those people who will read it. I don’t know. Still I wanted to share it and check if I’m right… 

On travelling, the heartbreak of saying goodbye and comfort zone

 If you have ever done it, you will know. Moving abroad has two the most difficult stages – the beginning and the end. At the beginning everything that is new, which means EVERYTHING around you, is bombarding you with the speed of light. You are constantly absorbing, absorbing and absorbing until your mind just cannot keep up and feels overwhelmed, with places, people, language, every little detail because nothing is familiar. You are still somehow excited to be in a new place, but you feel also lost and tired. That part is difficult, but it’s not that bad. You will survive that, just get patient and strong. There’s quite a lot of fun in it. Then you will be just proud of how much you have learnt and how perfectly you have accommodated to a completely new environment.

         What is REALLY difficult and moreover REALLY painful is the end. I guess I should have already found a solution to suffer less, but I have not.

         My family and some friends calls me globetrotter, but I don’t consider myself a great traveler, compared to some people I know and many, many people I don’t know. But still I think I have changed places enough times to be called a traveler, just without adjectives. It all really started when I was 15 and had to leave the city where I was born and had spent my whole lifetime in for a little town where the family of my mum is from. I had to leave behind almost everything I knew, almost all of my world, all the young and fragile life of mine. It felt like losing ground under my feet and falling down into darkness, I’m not exaggerating. When we left, I was crying, no, blubbering in the car for two hours and stopped only because I got headache and felt sick. And when we got to a new place I was supposed to live in, I couldn’t get over it for about two months until I started a high school there and realized that shit just got real and we’re not coming back. I assume that after such a traumatic experience I should have started to hate travelling and changing places for the rest of my life in order to avoid such a pain again. But I haven’t. It became opposite. That turning point of my life seems to have started a new phase of my life. It maybe even indeed have started my real life. It has marked the way I unconsciously started to live afterwards. After that change I never spent in any place more than a few years and I don’t think I will in the nearest future. 3 + 5 + 1,5 years in different cities of Poland, 5 + 6 + 2 + 1 months in different places in Finland and 3 + 2 months in England. And now I’m about to leave Mexico after spending here 7 months. So how come that after such a leave trauma I made my life a constant travel? I guess because I saw and unconsciously learnt what happened after the pain went away. I accepted. I got used to. I made friends. I made better friends that I had in my life before. I experienced many good things and I saw life from a new perspective. It turned out it was all for good.

         I know it’s always for good, I know that everything has its beginning and its end and, finally, I know that when I decide to travel it indicates saying goodbye and saying goodbye indicates pain. It’s the whole package, you take it all or forget it. All or nothing. So I take all because being stuck in one place for me means exactly nothing, means stagnation. I know that I choose it, I know it’s unavoidable, I know something new will start, but so what if still after so many times it hurts the same! Like I hadn’t learnt anything. Or better, my mind has, but my heart has not.

         And the farewell I am about to experience seems to be the toughest. Why? The extent of the pain of saying goodbye depends on many factors. In fact, they could be summarize in four points (but if you think any other could be added, feel free to tell me): 1) how much time you spent there, 2) how far you are going, 3) what and who is waiting for you back home or wherever you’re going, and the most important 4) how much of your heart you left there. In my case right now it is: 1) 7 months, 2) 10 000 km, 3) not too much, 4) way too much. If I was to define the point 4 in percentage, it certainly wouldn’t be 100%, because there are other people and places that are dear to me, but what matters is that the part of my heart that Mexico occupies was the part that was beating strongly for the last 7 months while the other parts were quite silent. So leaving is just a heartbreak. And get prepared, because the heartbreak is still not the worst part. The worst part is the emptiness that comes after. One day, one week, maybe two weeks after. If you have a lot of tasks and a lot friends around you, you’re lucky, you will suffer less. But still you will because nothing and nobody around you will have any memory in common with you from the life that you just left behind and that was so dear to you. But if you’re going to be stuck in an empty house like I am going to be soon, better start making right now a plan on how to fill your life again in order not to get depressed. Yes, what you experience after coming back can be nearly depression or in some cases literally depression. I’m not kidding.

         It’s like losing all the pieces that constructed your whole world for the time you spent there. They just disappear one after another, fly away and you can only helplessly see them leave and cannot stop them. The show is over, all the actors and all the elements of the stage design are being taken one by one until they turn off the light and you remain on an empty stage alone having not idea what to do next. But hey, isn’t the opposite metaphor the truth? You’re the one who leaves the stage for something new while everything stays the same stuck in one place, don’t you? Yes, but it feels how I described it. The magic trick is to convert that feeling in a feeling that goes with the truth. I am leaving for something new, something even better. The mind knows it, but heart is not that obedient. In the end I think it just has to hurt. You won’t overcome it. You just have to be patient, experience it as it is and get through it. Fighting with it usually gives you just more pain. You fight, fight, fight, think that you’re strong, but then there comes one weak moment and it strikes all with even more power. Just live with it until it goes away, it always does.

         In those stages of my life I think I should at last settle down in one place, just to avoid this pain. But I know I cannot, because nothing is worse that stagnation. It doesn’t really hurt you so much and that’s why it’s way much dangerous because it kills you silently. You get safe and comfortable and that’s a trap because life begins where the comfort zone ends.

         About two days ago I imagined that I could be still stuck in the same office, sitting on the same chair, staring the same screen and coding the same invoices. It was quite probable, I was quite close to stay there. But I made a step and changed 7 months in front of invoices for 7 months of teaching lovely Mexican children, giving them attention and getting their love in return, experiencing wonderful Mexican friendships, getting sunburnt by the Carribean sun, eating tortillas, drinking tequila, climbing pyramids, swimming in cenotes, learning Spanish and more, more, way much moooooooooore that is just unwritable because it’s pure emotion that fills me inside. It made me laugh that I could have missed it all just because of stupid comfort zone and some fear. Oh my God, I made the best decision in my life. THE BEST ONE. I will cry as a fuck while leaving, but if I’m capable of making such perfect decisions, I can make even better ones and bring more life to my life again. Can’t I?