Saying Nothing, We Say Everything With Just One Look
Without saying anything, just with a look, and there it is! That’s how all the “I love you” are written, all the kisses given, all the promises made and the caresses we both carry tattooed on our skin. Because when your eyes and mine meet, no words are needed, the entire universe enters the same rhythm and our hearts dance, there, between your gaze and mine…
Linguists say that although love is the most universal feeling and known to all, the way in which love is expressed in each country includes a diversity of ways that makes it unique in each place, almost untranslatable between languages. In Japan, for example, there is the term “Koi no yokan”, which would be something like an intense and inexplicable feeling that we have when we are in front of someone we will surely want forever.
A look and a “I love you” in a thousand languages
They say that love is a chemical shipwreck, that desire, that every promise made under the sheets or on the nights we walk home slowly, tracing dreams between kisses and laughter, is nothing but the result of complex machinery of our neurotransmitters, of our complex hormones…
It’s definitely hard to believe. Because love is more than chemistry, it’s moments, it’s a look that attracts us for no reason, it’s an I love you that we already talk about with some fear because we’re taking risks, as if our lives were sucked for that alone. Perhaps for this reason, human beings have always tried to reduce, through language, the whole range of inexplicable, contradictory and intense emotions, but always magical, that we feel. Let’s look at some examples.
- Fig. From Hebrew, it is when we feel happy because something good happened to the one we love.
- Dorn. From the Roman, it refers to the painful sensation we experience when we are not together with the person we want.
- Merak. When we love, when we do something that satisfies us in a very intense way, it feels like we are essential to the universe. It’s a wonderful thing, an emotion so full and intense that the Serbs identified it with that sonorous word.
- Cwtch, from Welsh. It is the wonderful hug we receive from our love.
- Naz, from Urdu. It refers to the pride of feeling loved.
- In the Yamana language, from a people in the southernmost part of America, the “Mamihlapinatapei” look is described as one in which two people desire each other and cannot stop looking at each other, but are still too shy for either of them. take the first step.
The silent love, the love of looks
No part of our body carries as much emotional charge as the gaze. That’s why it doesn’t really matter in which language you say “I love you”. Because most likely we already knew long before that we are loved thanks to those twinkling eyes, that gaze that completely surrounds us, that seeks us, that will never need an explanation to describe what the soul feels.
Silent love says much more than any sentence, much more than a speech and the best letter in the world. In fact, when words run out, hands seek each other, mouths seek each other to draw kisses, and skins meet to play the true game of love, when silence reigns and everything is authentic.
Nevertheless, people will always need to communicate to build love. And whether it’s with sign language, or in some cases by force learning the language of the person we’ve fallen in love with at some point, we need to communicate to give shape to what’s lit up in our heart.
According to Gary Chapman, author of “The 5 Languages of Love”, the physical expression of affection and passion is only part of what constitutes a stable and happy couple’s relationship. People need affection, support, empathic communication and the complicity of the person capable of saying in words everything that expresses their eyes.
Because, as they say, love starts with a look, it’s said with a word, it’s felt with a kiss, and sometimes it’s lost with a tear.
