This is my home right now. Or what used to be, I guess. There’s a dishwasher sitting disconnected in the middle of the floor, a bathroom with exposed plumbing and broken pieces of particle board everywhere.
If you’ve been following along, my last several weeks have been rather occupied with this renovation. I feel like I’ve been living in a state of everything being in chaos and mid-process. Every drawer emptied, every shelf cleared, every item requiring a decision - keep and need during the reno, keep and store or donate.
Knowing that in several months, when the renovation wraps, I will be doing a version of it again in reverse is something I’m trying not to stress over too much. New cabinets in different spots, a new layout, re-sorting where everything goes.
At some point I thought: I just need this chapter to close. Like my nervous system was holding its breath, waiting for the renovation to be done so it could finally exhale.
看开 kàn kāi “see it open”
During one of my I’m-too-tired-to-do-this-anymore scrolling breaks, I came across a reel about how differently English and Chinese language (or culture) approaches the experience of getting through something hard.
The concept it was describing - 看开 (kàn kāi) - is a phrase used often in Chinese, usually around heartbreak and loss.
In English, the concept we reach for is closure. We hear the word a lot: I need closure. I need to close this chapter. I need to put this behind me. The assumption is that you get through difficulty by bringing something to an end - by closing it off so you can move on.
The Chinese language doesn’t have an equivalent concept. 看开 (kàn kāi) translates roughly to “see it open.” 看 (kàn) means to see or to look. 开 (kāi) means to open. The idea is that you get through something hard not by closing it down but by widening how you see it. By opening how you see it until it doesn’t take up the whole view.
The character 开 shows up again in the Chinese word for happiness - 开心 (kāi xīn). 心 is the heart. 开心, literally, is an open heart. The same “open” from 看开 - see it open - is the character describing what it means to be happy. In Chinese, happiness is described as a state of openness.
Watching that reel reminded me there was another way to think about the whole intense packing situation. Closure wasn’t the only option I had.
What the words do
Language we use shapes the thoughts we’re able to have inside a situation. “I need closure” puts the relief at the end. It makes recovery conditional on something finishing. 看开 puts the shift in the seeing. It suggests you can change how you experience something without the situation itself having to change first.
I’m not making it wrong for me to want the chaos to be over. That’s a reasonable thing to want when your home is in pieces on the floor, even if it was a choice. But to think that I couldn’t feel okay until it was done? That part I could look at differently.
I grew up speaking both English and Chinese. More days than not, depending on the situation or the context, my mind switches between them. Only this week did I realize that sometimes switching the language also gave me another perspective I could use. English was asking me when this would be over. Chinese was asking me whether I could see it differently while I was still in it.
As I lie in bed mentally planning the move back in, I remember that 看开 doesn’t ask you to feel good about the mess. Then I think about where the cutlery is going to go in the new drawers. Then 看开 again. Then the cutlery.
See what’s there. Choose what stays.
A Thought To Carry Forward:
In Chinese, the same word for ‘open’ lives inside getting through something hard and being happy. It’s probably not a coincidence.