To See Ourselves as Others See Us
Emotional Intelligence, Arrival, and the languages that shape our inner and outer worlds.
Deep Life Reflections | Essay 121 | James Gibb
The Scottish poet and lyricist, Robert Burns, who composed most of his work in my home town of Dumfries in Scotland.
Every language we learn changes the borders of the world we think we know.
“Oh that the gods the gift would gi’e us
To see ourselves as others see us.”
–Robert Burns
Thirty years ago, most people had never heard the term ‘emotional intelligence.’ Today, it’s everywhere. Meetings, classrooms, parenting discussions. We’ve learned that being smart about our feelings might matter as much as IQ. Maybe more.
Much of this new vocabulary can be traced back to 1994, when Daniel Goleman published what remains the definitive book on the topic: Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. His book introduced ideas that are now part of our lives, from the role of empathy, to our “two minds”—the rational and the emotional—and the importance of knowing ourselves, an idea as old as Socrates.
At its core, emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, understand, and manage emotions. While reading, I found myself applying my experiences to measure my own level of emotional intelligence. As a result, I often spent ten minutes on a single page. Sometimes even longer.
In his five-part structure, Goleman covers the anatomy of emotions, how emotional intelligence works and can be applied, and the opportunities it offers. He argues that how well we do in life depends on both intelligence (IQ) and emotional intelligence. Intellect cannot work at its best without emotional intelligence: we need to harmonise heart and head.
Goleman believes emotional intelligence is a skill we can all cultivate. I’ve picked out three concepts we can all learn something from.
1. On anger and self-control
The word ‘emotion’ comes from ‘to move.’ All emotions create an impulse to act, and self-control begins with resisting that first impulse. “The ability to control impulse is the base of will and character,” Goleman writes.
Benjamin Franklin put it simply:
“Anger is never without a reason, but seldom a good one.”
Of all emotions, rage is often the most stubborn. Goleman offers two remedies: challenge the thoughts that trigger anger as quickly as possible, and cool off physiologically: take a walk, leave the room, let the adrenal surge pass. Well known but easier said than done.
If you’re facing an interaction with a troublesome person, you might find this passage from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius helpful:
“It is the privilege of human nature to love those that disoblige us. To practice this, you must consider that the offending party is of kin to you, that ignorance is the cause of the misbehavior, and the fault is involuntary, that you will both of you quickly be in your graves; but especially consider that you have received no harm by the injury, for your mind is never the worse for it.”
2. On the language of emotion
Goleman argues we can only manage what we can name. Naming emotions accurately, rather than the vague “I’m stressed,” we might see “I’m disappointed” or “I’m afraid.” This gives us the opportunity to reframe, a powerful technique in life, and central to my coaching practice.
Language shapes our emotional experience: how we see ourselves and the world, expanding what is possible, and how we feel about it.
3. On empathy and morality
The roots of morality lie in empathy. When we put ourselves in another’s place, someone in pain, danger, or deprivation, we share their distress, which moves us to act. Empathy leads us to follow certain moral principles out of shared humanity as well as duty. I hadn’t considered the connection between empathy and morality before.
Brené Brown sees empathy as connection. But we often miss it. When a good friend for example shares something very difficult with us, we most commonly try and make things better. So if they say “my marriage is over,” or “my son has been kicked out of school” we often reply, “At least you had a marriage” and “At least your daughter is doing well.”
Brown suggests the best response is something along the lines of: “I don’t even know what to say: I’m just so glad you told me.” Rarely can a response make something better. What does make something better is a connection.
Emotional intelligence is woven into our lives, but I’d suggest we are all far from masters. We may all benefit from learning to speak the language of emotion a little better.
A film like Arrival might be a good starting point. Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 film imagines language as something even larger than the self. He sees it as a force capable of changing how time, grief, and humanity itself are understood.
Arrival (2016). Directed by Denis Villeneuve
Arrival poses an unspoken but implied question: If you knew your life from beginning to end, would you change anything?
This existential question is the one facing Dr. Louise Banks and we watch her try to answer it.
When twelve pod-shaped objects touch down across the globe, panic and fear ripple through governments and nations. Louise, a linguistics expert, is brought in to help decipher the intentions of these visitors. Played by Amy Adams, she imbues the character with emotional depth and intelligence. Indeed, it’s her face and the emotions etched on it that we remember the most from the film.
Adapted from Ted Chiang’s The Story of Your Life, Arrival is a science-fiction film about the power of language and the nature of time. This is not Independence Day. There is little traditional action and no saving-the-day theatrics. Instead, it’s an intimate exploration of time, grief, love, compassion, humanity, and both the limits and possibilities of communication.
The visitors, called Heptapods, resemble something both ethereal and aquatic. They speak in sounds like whale calls and write in circular, ink-like symbols. As Louise learns their language, she begins to think as they do: non-linearly, unbound by time. The film references the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the idea that the language we speak shapes how we think. As Louise learns this alien language, she starts to perceive her own life differently, with past, present, and future folding into one.
Progress communicating with the creatures is steady but slow. With no answers to the critical question of why they’ve come to Earth, fear and suspicion begin to fracture cooperation between nations, as humanity’s protective instinct threatens to turn misunderstanding into destruction. It creates a chain reaction as the scientists stop sharing their findings with each other. War looms. The inability to communicate—and the refusal to try—becomes the real danger.
We begin to understand that the story of Arrival itself is non-linear. As Louise learns, so do we. This human vulnerability is reflected in the film’s earthy, saturated look, created by Bradford Young’s striking cinematography. Villeneuve wanted the film to feel “like this was happening on a bad Tuesday morning, like when you were a kid on the school bus on a rainy day and you’d dream while looking out the window at the clouds.”
Though it looks to other worlds, Arrival’s deepest questions are closer to home: How do we approach what terrifies us? How do we deal with grief? If we knew our future losses, would we still choose them anyway? It reflects something common to all of us: the days when communication breaks down and the fear of the unknown seeps in. Yet it also speaks to the best in us. Our perseverance. Our willingness to repair what is broken. And the fragile miracle of understanding one another despite or because of our differences.
“Language is the foundation of civilisation. It is the glue that holds a people together. It is the first weapon drawn in a conflict.”
—Arrival
In Emotional Intelligence and Arrival there is a connecting thread of language. Whether literal or emotional, language shapes how we live, cooperate, and face and overcome challenges.
For the past three and a half months, I’ve been learning a new language: Spanish. Ahead of my move to Spain later this year, I wanted to get a head start. My goal is to become fully fluent by the end of 2026.
I’ve found it quite challenging. I haven’t studied another language since school. That was French where I struggled and bid it adieu at 15. Learning a new language 34 years later isn’t easy, especially when English, my native language, is so widely spoken. But I want to integrate into Spain, and learning the language is an absolute necessity for me.
I have a Spanish tutor, Daniel, and thankfully he is very patient. Progress so far has been quite slow, yet consistent. Three online sessions a week, and none missed so far. It can be frustrating: a lot of mistakes, many wrong verb conjugations, and getting masculine and feminine nouns mixed up, although I have now committed to memory that bread is masculine and milk is feminine. Just a few thousand more to go.
Learning a new language is, for anyone, an act of emotional intelligence. A willingness to feel incompetent, to risk misunderstanding, and to live in uncertainty. Yet also to persist. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
Every new language changes the world a little, including the one inside of us.
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