Peggy Noonan, We Need to Talk

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan

I have been known to say that emotional intelligence is good to know because we all dream in the same language.

I hope you will read this beautiful article. For one thing, it is very gently written on a very very controversial issue. For another, as she says, how do we comfort someone (instruct, advise, educate, train, employ) someone when there is no language in comon.

On of the EQ competencies is vocabulary for emotional expression. I've seen it in multicultural offices, where the person has become offended and uses the word "respeto" or
"rispetto," and it has not been understood -- either the word, because our word respect ends in a hard KT sound and we don't roll the RRRR. The offence was not intentional, the misunderstanding is escalating ... we need a common language.

Noonan says many good things:

...air conditioning. I had forgotten long ago to be grateful for it.

So I turned around and went back. I wanted to say something--I don't know what, find out where she was from, encourage her. I said hello, and she looked at me and I patted her arm and said, "Happy Fourth of July, my friend." She was startled and then shy, and she smiled and made a sound, and I realized: She doesn't speak English. "God bless you," I said, because a little while in America and you know the word God just as 10 minutes in Mexico and you learn the word Dios. And we both smiled and nodded and I left.

I went into Bloomingdale's and wrote these words: "We must speak the same language so we can hearten each other."

Read the article, it's a good one.

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