Connections

A little while ago, I finished reading a book entitled Born on a Blue Day, written by a savant with Asperger's. I think I'll save my feelings on the book for another time, but I will at least say that a lot of what he mentions in his book is quite familiar to me. Upon finishing the book, I was left with a hunger for more--more words and more information. Reading is one of those contagious little maladies whose presence many like myself welcome rather than scorn. I just wanted to keep the words going because of how comforting they are to me. In keeping with this theme, I decided to try to finish a book on cross-linguistic transfer, and the place at which I happened to stop at the culmination of my last read concerns itself with the internalization of new concepts: conceptual transfer, if you will. This concept of one's mind making room for yet more concepts when presented with models for thought peculiar to a newly acquired language is not difficult to grasp, though it may be difficult for some to relate to the experience and the feelings associated with it.
Through my experience in other languages, particularly ASL, I understand the power that conceptual transfer possesses to completely transform one's internalization of the reality around him. However, I'm now realizing that my ability to relate to conceptual transfer experiences has deeper roots in my personal communication experiences within my first language. Throughout my life, I've had to learn and sometimes memorize and practice behaviors seemingly intuitive to the rest of the world. A lot of these behaviors stem from the internalized concepts of other human beings, and some of those concepts still remain rather foreign to me. It's not that I don't have any idea about them; it's that they don't translate 100 percent for me. For example, the idea of personal space as being something sacred was something I had to get used to, at least when other people were concerned. I would pluck, poke, and touch my high school friends to express how I felt, and I always assumed that people who were averse to this did not like me at all. I had to learn the hard way that, just as there are types of touch and other stimuli that make me uncomfortable, other people too have these feelings about the space around them. I'm not really sure why I wasn't able to make the connection between my experience and that of my peers, though I'm working toward that as well. But when I finally understood the idea, my brain expanded and was opened up for even more new ideas.
Conceptual transfer is ultimately about making connections between the reality in your head and the reality of the greater universe, no matter what language is involved, and I brim with elation every time I get a glimpse of another person's way of experiencing the world or another way in which I can grow in how I experience it. I'm learning all the time. It's something that happens all the time, and I feel so fortunate that I'm aware that something this miraculous is happening right inside my own head.