Una Palabra Sola Episode 23, dejar
Accept your invitation to truly be present, and enjoy the space between moments and tasks on your to-do list. With each thing you say “goodbye” to, allows time for a new “hello”.
Song recommendation: Dejaría Todo por Chayanne.
dejar: (v) to leave, put; to allow, let
Synonyms: poner, colocar (to put, place); olvidar (to forget); irse, abandonarse (to leave, to abandon); parar, cesar, interrumpir (to stop, to stop doing something, to interrupt); descuidarse (to let yourself go)
Antonyms: coger, recoger (to pick up, to grab, to catch); prohibir, impedir (to prohibit, to impede); amparar, proteger (to protect); regresar, llegar (to return, to arrive); quitar, arrebatar (to snatch, grab); empezar, iniciar (to start, to begin); cuidarse (to take care of yourself)
From the Latin laxāre, to loosen, to relax, to open up
For reflection:
What is begging to be let go with grace from your life? Does it feel temporary or permanent?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Think of a story you’ve been telling yourself. How can a different perspective shift the narrative?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
How can you focus on the present in your conversation practice? What kind of grounding exercises could be helpful?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Una PS has been a labor of love from the beginning. If you’d like to join our lil’ love fest via the Deseo program, click here to sign up! We all have our own wishes and desires when it comes to language, and with some resources and accountability, I can help make yours come true.
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Hola y bienvenidos, hello and welcome to Una Palabra Sola, where we get to learn Spanish one word at a time. I'm your host Megan Miller, founder and teacher at Aprovechar Language Solutions. Empezamos and let's dive in. Hola otra vez y bienvenidos al episodio 6 de la segunda temporada de Una Palabra Sola, a place where you get to learn Spanish one word at a time.
And I wanted to start off this podcast episode with a quote that's been on my mind. This is a quote from the internet, so you know that it's true. And this quote has been from Bright Wanderer. It is a long one. So buckle in. Where they say,
“I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned forever into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like, if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy. But then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else, so you close it. It is, quote unquote, a failed business. If you write a book or two, and then decide that you don't actually want to keep doing that, you are a, quote unquote, failed writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then it stops working and you get divorced, it's a quote unquote failed marriage. The only acceptable win condition is that you keep doing that thing forever.”
They end with, “I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was so good, and it's okay to be sad that it ended too, but the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success, I don't think that's doing us any good at all.”
1:58
And I wanted to get through that entire quote because it is so poignant for today's word. Today's word is actually a verb, el verbo dejar. It's a verb, it is an action, dejar. It means to leave, to put, or to allow, or let. There are three main ways for dejar, but as you can probably… well, as you will be able to tell, there are a, and this is the technical term, a shit-ton of uses and phrasal verbs that you can use with dejar.
All that means that in phrasal verbs, you have essentially a verb and an adjective or an adverb and then that changes the verb, like get down, get up; how get down can mean like if you're at a party and get down versus, get down from there if you're climbing a tree; get up or turn up, turn down.
So those are all examples of phrasal verbs in English. So phrasal verbs in Spanish, pretty much the same thing just en español. Our three main uses, our three main camps of dejar: you can dejar a alguien, and that is to walk out on or abandon someone. You're leaving someone.
You can dejar de hacer algo, so this is dejar con otro verbo, with another verb, and that just means to stop doing. Deja de fumar. Stop smoking. Deja de tomar. Stop drinking. Deja de comer ensalada. Stop eating salad. Whatever it is that you're trying to stop.
And then, of course, you can have this reflexive verb, dejarse, and when it's reflexive it has that “se” on the end that means like you're neglecting yourself or you're letting yourself go. Me dejo. I did not shave my legs for four days. Gasp. Clutching the pearls. It is summer. So, me dejé. I let myself go a little bit, right? So, dejarse, to neglect yourself; dejar de hacer algo, to stop doing; or dejar a alguien, to walk out on, to abandon, to leave someone.
4:23
Also, dejar is used in a lot of exclamations and this use case really depends on the context, and it really depends on the environment. For example, let's say that you are being, I don't know, molestado or molestada by someone. You're being bothered by them. You can say, déjame en paz. So, whether that is you're walking down the street and somebody is, you know, shaking their tin cup and saying, “hey, help me, help me, help me.” Or if you were around a bunch of small children and they want to jump all over you, or if, and I don't see how anyone would use this in this context, but if you're around a bunch of puppies or dogs and you want them to leave you alone: déjame en paz, leave me in peace, leave me alone.
It's also como orden, and this is the imperativo, this is the command verb tense of déjalo. Or deja, meaning, like, no tomar ni coger una cosa. Don't grab something. So also very applicable for pets, children, spouses, I guess. Dejalo, like leave it. It means, don't pick something up, don't grab something.
Also, dejar, you can see this and you probably have already seen it in a lot of internet quotes. Like, deje que la vida fluye. It's like, basically this air of surrender, of letting life go, letting life flow. Deja las cosas que no te sirven. Leave all the things that don't serve you behind. And what I love about dejar, is this air of, like, surrender, of peace, and grace.
6:12
Because, quite honestly, in English we have this very abrupt, like, you stop something. Similar to the quote that we started with, you stopped and you failed. We, in English, are very guilt heavy, right? There's no impersonal “se” in English. We can't say, or we don't say, we can if we choose, but we don't. Let's say that, you know, you're at a museum and you bump into a bench and then that bench makes an artifact fall and it could just be se cayó el artefacto. Se cayó la cosa. It fell. Versus he made it fall, she made it fall, it's his fault, it's her fault. Like, we play this blame game, culpability a lot in English versus in Spanish. It's just that impersonal “se” of like, hey, it fell. And that's a lovely grammar piece of communicating that something was an accident.
We don't necessarily communicate that or put a lot of stock in communicating that in English. So. It's that air of peace, surrender, grace. But then you also have so many phrasal verbs, like dejar caer, which is decir algo con intención oculta. To say something with a hidden intention, dejar caer. You also have, por ejemplo, dejar vivir, basically, to leave- to live. And this is essentially no importunar a los demás, ni entretenerse en sus asuntos. And this is taken directly from RAE. This is essentially saying like, let them live. You know how Tupac in that one song was like, let me live, man. Just let me live. That is dejar vivir. Déjame vivir. Just stop meddling in my shit. Dejar vivir.
8:16
You also have, por ejemplo, dejarse decir. And dejarse decir, to lose yourself speaking, is like soltar en la conversación algo que no convenía manifestar. Basically, to fall in this conversation, like to let something fall, to let something slip that doesn't necessarily belong in there. So, por ejemplo, I can pull in my family for this one and be like, “hey, I had a really great day” and they're like, “oh, that's great. Did you know that your grandma was, I don't know, harvesting turnips?” And I'm like, what? And that is dejarse decir, to basically let something slip in conversation that does not belong. To say something with this intention, but it's like intentionally trying to throw you off a little bit. It doesn't necessarily follow the social norm.
As I said before, this is coming from RAE. What RAE is, this is Real Academia Española. So, this is essentially the language gods of Spanish that live in Madrid and define and distinguish all of the Spanish words, verbs, sinónimos, antónimos, todos. I will have this link in the show notes for you all. It is also… first of all, it's free. So, aprovecha esa. Like, definitely take advantage of that. It is free. And it is like the Bible; whatever deity you pray to, it is that. The RAE is just one of those fuentes, one of those sources that I always go to: RAE, wordreference.com, where it's like, okay, give me everything in Spanish. Wordreference.com is a little bit more bilingual. Especially for such a little spiderweb like dejar, it is very important to have these fuentes, to have these sources.
And dejar is from Latín, which should not come as a surprise. Pretty much all of Spanish comes from Latin… well, the things that didn't come from Arabic. So, this is from the Latin laxare. And you will notice this lax, No, it's not lacrosse. It is lax. It's the same thing that… it's the same prefix for laxative, or the same suffix for relax. So, that lax is essentially that matiz, that nuance, that feeling, that tone of relax, surrender, let life live.
11:07
All right, sinónimos, antónimos; synonyms, antonyms, this… Buckle in, because once again, this is so hefty of a word, it should have its own trash bag commercial. So, como leave or put, unos sinónimos de dejar son poner o colocar. Poner, colocar. Como olvidar, you can say, Ay, me he dejado la mochila en casa. Like, I am waiting, still waiting for Dora the Explorer to do this and leave her backpack at home. Me he dejado la mochila en casa. And this is like, olvidar, to forget. You can also have, and this is that synonym for the significado abandonar, to abandon. Irse, to leave. Abandonarse, to abandon. Me abandonó el perro. The dog abandoned me because he found another family that he wanted to live with, and then I had to run after him. One time, we go to a dog park, one time. Me abandonó.
You can also have, and this is dejar como to stop doing something. Parar, cesar, interrumpir. So, this is parar, to stop. Like if you go to Latin America and you see parar on a stop sign, it's what that is. Cesar is like to cease, basically, to stop doing something. So, parar is more of like a mobile stop. Cesar is like to stop doing something. Interrumpir, that is to interrupt. So déjalo, to stop doing something, like leave it. Or interrumpir, to interrupt, to stop doing this and instead focus on this. And then dejarse, so that reflexive, that is como descuidarse. So cuidar, cuidado, piso mojado. Cuidar is to take care of or to take care in something, cuidarse is to take care of yourself. Me cuido. I ate a salad today. Me cuido. Des, that D E S, is to stop doing that, it's el opuesto. Right? So, dejarse, to let yourself go. Descuidarse, basically to let yourself go. Como orden, déjalo. So you can have the opposite, no molestar, don't bother. Or you can have permitir, to allow, so like déjalo, it's like leave it, permítalo, it's like allow it, so I guess that would be no permítalo.
14:00
Como antónimos, so the antonym of leave, or let, or put, this is like coger, recoger, this is essentially to catch or to pick up. Prohibir, impedir. Prohibir looks exactly like prohibit and that's what it is. Impedir is to impede. It looks like impede and it is. To protect, this is like dejar como irse o abandonarse, like to leave or abandon, you can have amparar, proteger, so this is to protect. Instead of somebody leaving you, you have somebody coming to protect you. And in the same vein, regresar, llegar, to return or to arrive. People are coming in to protect you versus dejar, people are leaving.
And then you also have, como antónimo, to leave or snatch or grab, like quitar, arrebatar. You have quitar, which is like to take off or get off or, snatch or steal… remove, essentially. And then same with arrebatar, this is a fun one just to say, but quitar de las manos, like to snatch or grab, like somebody is just grabbing something, they're agarrando something, they are grabbing it, they are quitando de las manos. And then dejar como antónimo, so dejar, like, to stop, parar, cesar. You can also have empezar, iniciar. So that's to start or begin. And dejarse, como antónimo, cuidarse. We already went over this. Take care of yourself. Do take care of yourself. You're the only one that really, really cares what happens to you, so please do take care of yourself.
16:02
And the reason why this verb, this lovely-ass verb, has been on my mind so much is that it's been very pertinent, especially during the summer, the vacation months, people are leaving, they are dejando, but then they're also leaving a lot of the expectations. In summer, things generally slow down. The expectations aren't quite as high. It's hard to hustle when you have back sweat 24/7. So, dejar has been on my mind not only in the vacation that I just took and all of the things, all of the emotions around that, that first real vacation since 2018. But it's also the idea of this transitional period. And when we think about transitions, we think about, you know, what's coming next, what's coming next, what's coming down the pipeline, down the pike, whatever sports words you want to put with it, that sometimes we forget that when we leave something or we surrender, we allow ourselves that grace to have those gaps for once, that having those gaps allows the space to be filled with something else.
We're so busy in our routine that summer, it's wonderful because a lot of us are out of that routine with kids or sports or vacations or something. It's that opportunity to disfrutar, to aprovechar things, right? To aprovechar la vida, hopefully with air conditioning, to really take advantage of life. And with dejar, it's inherently defining change. When you leave something, you are, one phase is being left, and another is beginning. For example, in meditation, we focus on the present breath, and not two breaths in the future, not five breaths in the past. Each moment, cada momento, is this opportunity to dejar el pasado en el pasado, porque ya está, y disfrutar el presente.
18:15
And this idea of the present is truly fleeting. If you think about every moment, every minute, that is truly fleeting. What are you going to do in this moment, this second? And so much… especially as a solopreneur, business owner, I'm thinking about a couple hours in the future, this week, this month, this quarter, this year, constantly thinking in these goalposts. And the goalposts never really end. Like, okay, one month is done. Holy crap, that went by really, really fast. What is this next month? And when you're constantly thinking in the future, you get (I get) very anxious, because you're constantly going, what's next? What's next? Okay, moving on. What is this rhythm? Develop the rhythm and then we can develop the routine and then we're doing… and it's just like, one foot in front of the other, in front of the other.
Dejar is this invitation to really truly be present. It's not thinking about the future and it's not ruminating on the past of like, oh, I had this conversation and I screwed up my genders. And I said, water fountain instead of source fountain, like a source. And I feel really dumb. Like, déjalo. We have so many thoughts and stories just bouncing around in our heads of who did us dirty or what we did wrong or, once again, it goes back to that blame, right? Of whose fault it was and how we can cover our own asses.
Dejar makes me think of, I don't know, you're at a bar, and it's last call, and they turn the lights up, and everything, you finally see, everything looking like the mess that it really is, like, the flecks of Cheeto dust, and wet shirts, and spilled drinks, and dried mascara rivers. You see all of it because the lights are on and your perspective has changed.
20:35
And it's like, if you had just left, if you had dejado, and just left, when your mind and your body told you to, you wouldn't see that. That perspective wouldn't be there. And it's not necessarily this ghosting, it's not storming off, it's not this air of culpability. It's just that surrender, peace, grace, like, déjalo.
Unless you are telling a small child or a dog déjalo, and there will be probably a temper tantrum. That's not as peaceful. Because that peace can really only come through acceptance. And telling Norman the Dog to leave a rabbit alone, he does not accept. The dude does not abide.
But that peace, especially as adults with frontal lobes that are actually formed, having that acceptance, knowing and accepting that we did everything we could with the information that we had at the time. That's when peace can come. And that's been something that I've been personally working at is leaving things in the past. Hey, you did the best you could; the information that you had at the time; the experience you had at the time. Just fucking leave it, but it's so socially rare to actually do that. It's one thing to be scrolling on your social media of choice and getting a nice little reminder that's created in Canva and it's like, yeah, I do need to leave it and then it's another to actually do the dirty ass work and bloody your knuckles and be like, yeah. I did do that because there's this ruptura, there's this breakage, there's a change.
22:29
Con todos los cambios habrá sentimientos. Habrá, there will be, sentimientos, there will be feelings with every single change and it really depends on which side of the story that you're on. If you dejar un puesto, you leave a job, well if you're leaving, you've had one foot out the door for a while, at least two weeks, and you're like, peace, I'm done with this. Versus if you are being left. If you are, están dejados, and it's like, oh we've abandoned; they left, that's great, qué suerte. But now we're left to pick up the pieces, or we're left with this extra work.
You can dejar la gente, you can leave people behind, right? Environments change, you decide to move, whatever, the vibes aren't there. It's hard to make and stay friends, because everyone is so frenetically trying to put one foot in front of the other, build a routine, get in the thing, do all the things. But when you are dejando gente, whoever those gente are to you, if you're leaving a situation versus being left in that situation, you're either the victim or the hero. And in our own stories, and those are the stories that we tell ourselves of they left me, versus they left me, versus, I left, versus, I left. And the words don't change, but the context, the nuance, the tone, the intent, that changes.
Because this is the beauty of dejar. It can be a horrible tragedy, or it can be an act of liberation.
And that can also be temporary. It can be this, you know, more permanent abandonarse. Or it can be temporary like me dejaron. Me dejaron en la calle. They left me in the street. But after that I was able to find my way home.
24:47
And going back to this temporality of it because really life is very temporal, and very temporary. Thinking about dejando el pasado, leaving the past in the past and just focusing on the present. This is the magic and beauty and the sweet spot of language because It's very poignant. You need to focus on the present when you are learning a language, speaking a language, practicing a language, writing a language. Focusing on the present will allow you to listen, to respond to the tone and the message in front of you, not just the words. There are a million and one ways to say what you want to say. So much so that John Mayer wrote a song about it. You can say whatever you want to say. And there are a lot of ways to do that. But depending on the tone, depending on the words, depending on the message, at what somebody is trying to convey in front of you, that's when you need that emotion.
Yes, the logic and the verb tenses, and the structure, and the grammar, those are very important to pay attention to, but especially when you're actually conversing, you need that emotion. You need to be able to connect with somebody because that is how we connect on a human level. So yes, you can use AI and you can go to a foreign country and you can find your way around because that is a transactional language. Tell me, how much, where is, thanks. Peace. Versus a relational language. Tell me more. What do you think about this? This is what I think. What do you think? ¿Qué te parece? How does that seem to you? Is that in alignment? Tell me a funny story. How is that funny?
26:57
That's the emotion that you need when you dejar. You leave your assumptions. When you dejar this listening to respond; it's like Pokemon, got to catch them all: no, you don't. You don't have to catch all the words. This is when you can dejar your lack of self-confidence, because you get all mixed up in your head, and you're trying to think five steps ahead in, in a conversation. That's not going to serve you. Deja las cosas que no te sirven.
Dejando cosas, leaving those things, leaving those habits, leaving those bad habits behind. That's when you can actually get to the next level in your language skills. Because, as I said earlier, when you leave things behind, hay huecos, there are gaps, and those gaps can be filled with beneficial tips and tools and confidence, and overall, I think overall our goal with learning a language is this sentimiento de paz.
This feeling of peace that we get when we are existing in that language, versus constantly feeling like you have to try or you have to, you know, climb a mountain. You don't. You don't have to climb this learning language mountain. You simply need to leave behind some bad habits so that you can superar and you can get ahead and mejorar and you can improve it. And you feel this sentiment of peace. Surrender and grace and just loveliness in in a language.
28:56
So, if you are ready to feel eso sentimiento de paz, that sentiment of peace, be sure to register for the monthly Deseo program at deseospanishprogram.info. También check out show notes, transcript, those two links for RAE, Wordreference and all of these synonyms and antónimos. Check all of that out and request a word at Aprovechar.me. Until next time, un abrazo fuerte.
Gracias otra vez and thank you so much for coming along with me on this ride to Una Palabra Sola. Be sure to check out the show notes for additional worksheets and materials. If you have a word that you would like me to review, please feel free to let me know at aprovecharlanguagesolutions.com. Hasta la próxima vez, until next time.