On 9th July, the Nurturing the Fields of Change community of practice for holistic transformation and social change gathered for the session “Beyond the Individual Magus”. The conversation invited us to consider how we can organise for transformation through awareness-based practice, and how paradigms; those deep, often invisible collective mindsets, shape the systems we live in.
Meadows (1999) identified paradigms as among the most powerful leverage points for change. But what we were interested in our discussion was discovering what lies beneath a paradigm. The discussion turned to the substrates of meaning-making: myths, metaphors, emotions, stories, and, most significantly for me, language.
As a linguist, I was particularly struck by this exploration of language as a generative force; not simply a tool for communication, but a framework through which thought itself arises. My own life has been steeped in languages: my undergraduate studies in Hispanic Studies and Italian, years teaching secondary school languages in the UK, and my fluency in four languages. Language is more than vocabulary or grammar to me; it is the very soul of a culture.
One of the most powerful illustrations of this lies in the way different languages construct the relationship between time, the unknown, and the self.
In English, we conceive of time spatially with the future in front of us and the past behind us. We “look forward to seeing someone.” We “move on from the past.” We “plan ahead” and “leave things behind.” Even subtle expressions like “facing the future” or “putting the past behind us” carry the same orientation: eyes open toward what is to come, with an expectation of foresight, vigilance, and preparation. It is as though we are walking with our gaze fixed on the horizon, scanning for obstacles, believing we should see them before they trip us (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).
But this is not a universal orientation. In Mandarin Chinese, the metaphor flips. The word “qián”, meaning “front,” often refers to the past; what is visible, known, and already encountered. Furthermore, the word “hòu”, “behind,” refers to the future; what cannot yet be seen. Thus, “qiántiān” (literally “front day”) means “the day before yesterday,” while “hòutiān” (literally “back day”) means “the day after tomorrow.” In this worldview, we walk backwards into the future, facing the past, the known, the visible (Núñez & Sweetser, 2006). The unknown stretches out behind us, shrouded in mystery.
This shift in metaphor invites profound questions. If our language situates us facing forward, do we then live with a subtle pressure to anticipate and control what comes next? And if another worldview situates us walking backwards into the unknown, does it invite a greater acceptance of uncertainty, a surrender to what cannot be seen until it arrives?
In a culture increasingly obsessed with prediction, planning, and control, where the unknown is often treated as a threat to be eliminated, this linguistic lens unsettles me in the best possible way. What if the unknown is not a horizon to scrutinise, but a vast, unseen landscape we must simply allow ourselves to enter, step by step, backwards?
Language, in shaping our metaphors of time, also shapes our paradigms of being. And in a world hungry for transformation, perhaps one of the most radical gestures is to shift the stories, metaphors, and linguistic frames that bind us. What if we chose, even in English, to speak differently of the future as something we will feel, touch, and encounter only as it brushes against us?
Perhaps, then, walking backwards into the unknown is not a deficiency, but a grace.
Join in Nurturing the Fields of Change to continue these conversations together…
References
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press.
Meadows, D. H. (1999). Leverage points: Places to intervene in a system. The Sustainability Institute
Núñez, R., & Sweetser, E. (2006). With the future behind them: Convergent evidence from Aymara language and gesture in the crosslinguistic comparison of spatial construals of time. Cognitive Science, 30(3), 401–450. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog0000_62
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