Poor language, aphasic mind
Kadir stood in a community center in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, staring blankly at a poster on the wall. Written in large letters in Swahili, it read: "Tell me how you feel!" Below it were the options: happy, sad, angry, scared.
"That's all we can think of," says community worker Martha, sheepishly. "Children's emotional vocabulary is so limited. If you ask them how they feel, they just say 'good' or 'bad'."
At this time, a boy about ten years old came over timidly. Kadir squatted down and asked gently in Swahili: "How was your day?"
The boy lowered his head and scraped his toes on the ground: "Not good."
"Can you tell me why it's bad?"
"It's just... bad."
When language cannot bear the weight of emotions, the soul falls into the cage of silence.
This discovery is not an isolated case. Almost at the same time, the Foundation noticed similar phenomena in various project sites around the world:
In East London, teenagers use a limited slang vocabulary of "lit", "bare", "peak" and so on to express all kinds of emotions;
In Tokyo's Shibuya, young people rely on universal adjectives like "cute," "scary," and "troublesome";
Even at the foundation's headquarters, Cheng Han found that team members frequently used the word "anxiety" in their reports to describe various states ranging from mild tension to panic attacks.
"We are experiencing a global 'emotional aphasia,'" Li Xiaoyu pointed out at an emergency meeting. "This is not a problem of language ability, but a collective degeneration of the ability to discern and express emotions."
To quantify this problem, Nila's team developed an "emotional vocabulary richness index." After sampling 20 cities around the world, they found that the number of emotional words used by ordinary people in daily life has decreased by nearly 40% over the past two decades.
"Most worryingly," Neela said in the report, "a decrease in emotion vocabulary was significantly positively correlated with increased rates of depression. When we can't name an emotion, we struggle to deal with it effectively."
Naming an emotion is the first step to taming it.
Kadir decided to start with the basics. He launched a project in Kibera called "Emotional Dictionary." Initially, he tried to teach emotion vocabulary directly, but with little success. Then one day, he saw Masha comforting a crying little girl.
"Does your heart feel like a flock of frightened birds?" Martha asked softly.
The girl nodded and sobbed, "They want to fly away, but they can't find a way out."
That moment dawned on Kadir: abstract emotional vocabulary was far less powerful than vivid metaphors. He immediately adjusted the program's direction, no longer requiring children to memorize technical terms like "anxiety" and "depression." Instead, he encouraged them to describe their feelings using familiar objects.
"My heart feels like there's a pot of water that never boils."
"It feels like being put into a shrinking box."
"It's like walking a long way to school with a heavy backpack on your back."
These imaginative expressions not only accurately capture the texture of emotions, but also build a bridge between telling and being understood.
Meanwhile, Cheng Han's team found another breakthrough on the technical level. Analyzing social media data, they discovered that emoticons and memes were becoming a new generation of emotional expression tools.
"This isn't degeneration, it's evolution," Cheng Han said, showing a series of emojis during a demonstration. "People aren't becoming less expressive, but rather searching for more efficient and resonant ways of expressing themselves. The problem is that these expressions rely too much on context and lack precision."
Based on this insight, Cheng Han's team developed an app called "Emotional Palette." Users can create their own emotional expressions by combining different colors, textures, and dynamic effects. These "emotional paintings" can be collected for personal collection or shared with friends who understand this "visual language."
When old language becomes obsolete, new ways of expression naturally emerge.
However, the most profound solution came from an unexpected source. Nila visited a ninety-year-old haiku poet in Kyoto. After hearing her purpose, the poet slowly unrolled a scroll of Japanese paper, upon which a seventeen-syllable haiku was written with a brush.
"You see," the poet said, "a limited number of syllables, an infinite amount of emotion. The question isn't how many words we have, but whether we're willing to stop and savor the scenery within."
This remark enlightened Nila. She realized that the impoverished nature of language stems from the uncontrolled pace of contemporary life. When everything strives for immediacy, speed, and efficiency, we naturally lose the ability and patience to carefully appreciate and express complex emotions.
The foundation launched the "Slow Expression Movement." This movement does not seek to create new words, but advocates:
A quarter of an hour every day: Put down your phone, quietly feel and record your emotional changes
Deep Conversation: Have an uninterrupted one-hour conversation at least once a week
Sensory awakening: awakening the body's sensitivity by tasting food, touching textures, and listening to nature
In a pilot community in Mumbai, participants began learning to "taste emotions," learning to discern different shades of sadness and textures of joy, just as one can discern dozens of different flavors in a cup of tea.
"I used to only know 'happiness,'" a housewife said at the sharing session. "Now I can distinguish 'the refreshing coolness of a sunny day after rain,' 'the warmth of my child's sleeping face,' and 'the satisfaction of accomplishing a small task.' Life has become... richer."
Three months later, the "Slow Expression Movement" has expanded to eight countries. The most surprising change occurred in Nairobi. The little boy who once only knew how to say "no" now describes his feelings this way:
"Today a little bird lives in my heart. Sometimes it sings, sometimes it is silent. But I know it is free."
At the project's closing meeting, Kadir shared his insights: "We've always believed that a poor language leads to a crudeness of emotion. But perhaps it's the opposite—it's the crudeness of emotion that leads to a poor language. When we learn to feel more delicately, rich expressions will naturally flow out."
Li Xiaoyu added with a smile, "So, what we really need to heal is not language itself, but our ability to communicate with our inner selves."
As night fell, Kadir stood high above Nairobi, overlooking the dimly lit slums below. He knew that in those shabby shacks, some people were trying to express their joys, sorrows, anger and happiness in new ways.
He opened his notebook and wrote down his observations for the day:
When we find the right words for our emotions, we find a way home for our hearts.
In the distance, I could hear the faint sound of singing. It was the community's newly formed choir practicing. The lyrics were simple, a single, repetitive line: "I am here, I feel, I exist."
Kadir closed his eyes and let the simple melody flow into his heart. Perhaps the most profound expression never requires complex words.
When words become pale, emotions lose their way home.
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