what spanish taught me about age
If I’m going to keep building, I might as well do it with fresh eyes — all the way through.
Changing your environment changes your perspective. And I don’t just mean the scenery — I mean the language you’re surrounded by, the one you’re forced to think and speak in, rewires how you see yourself.
Case in point: how we introduce our age.
In English, we’re taught to say “I am 35 years old.” Am — the verb to be. Our identity gets tied to a number from the very first sentence we learn to say about ourselves. The the number itself is a state of being.
Spanish does something different. Instead of ser (to be), it uses tener — to have. Tengo 35 ańos. Translated literally to “I have 35 years”. Age isn’t just something you are. It’s something you carry, hold and earn over time.
This is one of the basic concepts that every Spanish teacher has to articulate to their English-native students. The concept is unnatural to English grammar rules, but the more I sat with it, the more it undid something I didn’t know I need undoing. If age is something I have rather than something I am, then it stops being a cage and starts being closer to a possession, even a luxury.
Not everyone gets the luxury to grow old and have this many years — years of experience, love, wisdom, what if’s and growth. Framed that way, age stops being a countdown and starts being a badge of honor.
And this is where Spanish gets even more interesting: it also give you two different verb forms for “to be” — ser and estar. Ser for what’s essential and enduring. Estar for what’s temporary, situational and a state you’re currently in.
Spanish speakers can describe themselves without attaching themselves to the label. ‘Estoy triste’ doesn’t mean I am sad as a permanent state — it means I’m sad right now. ‘Estoy' soltera’ doesn’t mean you are single for life — it means you can go from saying ‘estoy soltera’ to ‘estoy casado’ with a swipe, a plane ticket or a yes.
The same concept applies for ‘Estoy feliz’ which means “I am happy”. The impermanent state doesn’t downplay one’s happiness. Rather, it’s reminding us that it is one of the things in life that’s fleeting, so might as well breathe in, take it all in for as long as you can.
Between tener for age and the ser/estar split for identity, the language itself seems to protect the speakers from over-defining themselves. English collapses all of that in one flat verb — to be — and asks it to carry everything for as long as you can: your mood, age, profession, etc. No wonder it’s harder to shake a label once you’ve claimed it in English.
Sometimes the best thing you can do today could be learning to introduce ourselves in a different language.
I’m only a few field notes into this, but I’m already seeing how this bleeds into brand & strategy work — how the words we choose for a brand’s page, the ad copy or call-to-action button, either lock it into a fixed identity or leave it enough room to evolve. More on that soon.
For now, I’m excited to keep noticing and thinking out loud what this culture — and this language — has to teach me, one verb at a time.
ciao,
ingrid
