Thank you for expressing your thoughts in words and experimenting with language to communicate with a fellow human on planet earth.

Students have told me that the difference between English and Japanese is that in English you have to say every thought you think. In Japanese one must feel the atmosphere of the room to know what is happening.

As someone that has generally been troubled by the mundanity of common daily conversation, repeated every day, every conversation, I have worked to break these conventions and say things in new ways. It’s interesting that it became my job to teach these conventional phrases so that the speaker would be accepted and as an English-speaker.

My tactic of feedback became: “I understand what you’re saying. Here is a more common way to say that.”

But I must insist that it was very nourishing to hear familiar sentiments phrased in original, authentic language intended simply to express a connection between humans on planet earth.