Shadowing Practice: Becoming Yourself Is More Important Than Preserving Yourself - Learn English Speaking with Video
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The Wild Iris.
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At the end of my suffering there was a door.
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Hear me out.
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That which you call death I remember.
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Overhead noises, branches of the pine shifting.
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Then nothing.
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The weak sun flickered over the dry surface.
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It is terrible to survive as consciousness buried in the dark earth.
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Then it was over.
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That which you fear, being a soul and unable to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth bending a little,
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and what I took to be birds darting in low shrubs.
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You who do not remember passage from the other world, I tell you I could speak again.
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Whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice.
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From the center of my life came a great fountain, deep blue shadows on azure seawater.
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So that was Louise Gluck and
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if you've not heard of Louise Gluck she is an American poet
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and essayist and has also won the Nobel Prize in 2020 I think.
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She was born in 1943 and And that poem was called, or is called, The Wild Iris.
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And today we're going to be talking about becoming yourself is more important than preserving yourself.
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And what do I mean by this?
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I guess I mean that becoming yourself is about learning who you actually are below the surface,
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not just what we see externally or aesthetically this isn't about like finding an aesthetic
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or finding you know your kind of brand or anything like
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that this is about something a bit deeper um
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and i think those other things i've spoken about actually often are more concerned about self -preservation
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and um being able to neatly define who you are
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which i think is kind of um an impossible task to do
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and we'll get into why
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but uh i have a few different things i want to talk about today
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so it's louise gluck i want to talk about richard powers the over story
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and i've also been learning a bit about some buddhist teachings
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that i think are relevant
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and tie all of this together in the the wild iris um
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it's spoken from the perspective of a flower bulb frozen in the earth a bulb that's buried and
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when she says the line
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it is terrible to survive as consciousness buried in the dark earth
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this is really touching on the notion of existing without growth it's being preserved
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but it's not really being allowed to exist
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and as always I keep looking down because I'm actually checking out my notes
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because I've written about the the poem itself and I've written some quotes
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that I've wanted to specifically bring up to you guys
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so the bulb is technically alive it is preserved
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but it's stuck in it's trapped almost actually in a pitch black stasis
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and this self -preservation is more about being driven by fear than anything else.
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On the surface it may feel safe preserving yourself in such a way
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but keeping your consciousness preserved in order to stop any kind of injury
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or mistake happening is an incredibly suffocating way to exist.
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This is just, I would argue, a version of surviving and surviving is not the same as existing and really living.
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And then the next few things, few lines that she says that I've written,
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then it was over that which you fear being unable to speak ending abruptly the stiff earth bending a little.
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And then what I've said about this is that
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so the exact moment the flower breaks through the the bending as they put
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it it breaks through its hard protective shell which is the winter earth and i think here it kind of highlights that
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Growth requires a very structural disruption, a shattering of the rigid walls that we would call the self,
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the wall that we build around us to preserve a version of identity.
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But the rupture itself is what actually ends the fear of being small or not having a voice.
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The rupture is actually the next steps in having that voice, in not being small.
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And then the next lines, I tell you I could speak again, whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice.
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The iris returns from oblivion to actually reclaim its expression in the world, to become.
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And actually I think in this sense
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that the kind of idea of self -actualization demands in fact
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that you face the risk of a total kind of breakdown of the former self
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or of oblivion because you cannot really find an authentic voice if you're trying to shield yourself from finding it.
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And then the last line of the poem
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and one I've written down again is from the center of
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my life came a great fountain deep blue shadows on azure sea water
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and the blossoming of the iris is really an expansive version of beauty
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it's outward reaching it's the acceptance of a change that caused this
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and it's also the ability to allow yourself to be vulnerable
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which is obviously very something that's quite difficult to to do but before we go any further,
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I just want to thank MUBI who are the sponsor of this video.
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And MUBI has really become the place I go to to find deep and meaningful films that really stay with me.
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MUBI is a curated streaming service dedicated to great cinema from
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all across the globe where it really feels like the films have been chosen by someone who genuinely loves film.
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And a film I actually watched recently that's really stuck with me is the film
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Sentimental Value which is on Mubi
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and it follows these two sisters whose lives become disrupted
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when their kind of evasive father returns into their lives
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and in the movie he's a celebrated film director
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and he is trying to make a film actually about the meaning of family and the meaning of his family.
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It becomes this really grief -stricken piece of work that really ties kind of art,
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memory, family history and all the kind of shared trauma family members inherit from one another.
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And my favourite part actually was the very beginning where
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The film opens with a young girl, one of the daughters, one of the sisters, thinking about the perspective of the house
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and how the house might have seen the family
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and the house's perspective on having occupants inside it
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and actually I do want to read you the first part because it really really touched me.
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In sixth grade, Nora was told to write an essay as if she was an object.
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She knew at once she'd be their house.
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She described how its belly shook as she and her sister ran downstairs and out the back door.
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That it saw them take the shortcut through the fence and onto the road, where the house no longer could see them.
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She wondered if the house liked to be empty and light, or full and heavy.
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If the floors liked being trodden on.
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If the walls were ticklish.
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if it ever felt pain, and she thought that yes, it probably liked to be full.
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Before them, other people and pets had lived their moments in time there.
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Her great -grandfather died in the room where her grandmother was born, which was now her parents' bedroom.
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Their father said the house had a floor, discovered right after it was finished a century ago.
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She wrote that it was as if the house was sinking, collapsing, only in very slow motion,
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and that her family's time there was just a split second in mid -air.
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When she read it later, she saw that she hadn't used the word quarrel, but wrote of the noise her parents made.
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But what the house disliked more than noise was silence.
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When her father left for good, the house grew lighter.
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The noise her parents made went away, but the house missed the other sounds he made.
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Definitely recommend checking out MUBI.
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It's really introduced me to films
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that I would have found really difficult to find otherwise
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and you can get 30 days of free great cinema at MUBI .com slash Josephine Writes
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and I've left the link and everything in the description below if you'd like to take a look.
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I highly recommend and thank you so much MUBI for sponsoring this video.
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Buddhist teachings in general assert that there's no fixed self to preserve in the very first place.
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There is just this kind of illusion of a fixed self
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and this illusion of the fixed self kind of forces one into the fear of self -preservation,
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the fear that one will lose the self if they don't preserve it.
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And there are five shifting aggregates and they fuel the flow of becoming
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which in buddhism is called anatta and i'm really sorry
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if i've pronounced it wrong i will write what i'm kind of talking about on screen
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so you can look up the word if you like yourself
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and see what i'm actually talking about
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but in essence anatta kind of means the non -self the idea
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that there is kind of no permanent self there is no unchanging self there is only a becoming a changing
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and in english language for example the word me is almost just a representation
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or a way of expressing these five shifting elements
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that we call me um so these five just the sorry these five shifting elements are body feelings,
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perception, mental formations and then consciousness.
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But the real self which is the non -self is just more of this flow,
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a flow with the natural impermanence of life and
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so the name obviously we just give to these shifting parts is me
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or I or the self
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but really I would almost think of this like a river how we call a river a river um
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but actually also in some cultures a river is um a verb as opposed to a noun
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which is more of a doing thing rather than a fixed entity
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and what i mean by this is
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that um a river we we call it a river
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but really it's it's never the same thing because the water
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that flows through the river is it could never be the
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same element of water ever again like you cannot catch the same piece of water again
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and that's kind of how life works
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and how the self works in the eyes of Buddhism
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and I feel like this idea resonates with me personally
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and then I was actually thinking like
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if we are to apply
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this kind of idea in the world in the Western world where like capitalism is dominant again
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I'm not like pro
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or against I'm just that's just what the world the Western world is kind of built upon
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so it's worth you know talking about it but
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if we are to talk about it um obviously anti -aging
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is a massive uh part of this kind of world
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we live in like we are told to preserve our youth
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because that is preserving beauty and that is preserving who we are
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when we are our most um productive almost our most um you know our highest level of self the self
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that can probably do the most in life you know
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because as you get older your body starts to decline in certain ways.
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I think that with this kind of buddhist teaching and then also
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when we are to think of the iris poem I think
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that we can obviously observe that the body is a temporary state
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and even within
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that the body is ever changing it's never one thing even within youth it's never one thing
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because you know when you're a teenager you have all these hormones
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and you're changing constantly and then
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when you go into your 20s you learn lots of new things
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you learn to live on your own you you know get a job
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that is perhaps a career
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and you learn there you meet new people like everything is always constantly changing like in a really simple way
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you know your hair grows and your nails grow
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and obviously being a teenager and being a child you your height changes but the actual clinging to maintain or preserve
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the self in any kind of way, that's the painful part.
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The painful part isn't actually necessarily the change, it's the idea that, or the hurtful part,
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the hurtful part mentally is the idea that you feel like you mustn't change
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because you are only worth something
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if you preserve a version of yourself that's more useful
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and then i i am someone who is obsessed with trees like whenever
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i i go for a walk every day
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and there's a lot of trees in my area
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and i always think how it's very strange
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that those trees have been sitting there for some of them hundreds of years
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and they've obviously seen things that or i've been around things that are like beyond my comprehension
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and they're just sitting there every single day waiting for me in their same spot
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and I find that really like endearing and it makes me feel less alone
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but anyway that's just my sentimental view on trees but
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when I think of a tree a tree has this beauty
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and that is not because it's flawless it's actually
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because it has signs of life it has signs
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that it has lived and that's actually what makes it beautiful
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and it's not beautiful in a vain sense it's beautiful in a truthful sense
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and you know like when you cut through a tree
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and you see the rings on the tree they can they tell a story the rings
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that are perhaps larger I think means you know maybe it was a better better weather -wise year
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and the rings are smaller perhaps it was a more difficult year
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and so these rings actually tell us the story
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and the tree sheds its leaves without fear and without grief
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and it knows it's still a tree with or without its leaves
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or with a changed leaf colour like from you know green in the summer to auburn
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and orange in the autumn to completely falling off in the winter and then turning to blossoms,
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white and pink blossoms in the spring and it's okay with these changes.
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It's not grieving itself, it's just being.
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And I don't want this to be confused with being passive in life because I'm not saying to be,
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I don't think any of these kind of poems or readings or anything are actually saying to be passive.
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I think they're just saying that there are some things
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that we can choose and there are other things we can't choose
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and one of the things we cannot choose is the fact
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that life is almost yet continuous change so to accept that
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and go with the flow of that and within
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that make decisions where we can but also even these decisions might change us
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but be okay with that change
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because you underneath the foundation just like a tree the roots are there
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if you make sure
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that you know you are not just obsessing over very aesthetic surface level issues as as opposed to like you know depth.
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The tree's roots are really where it stems from and the leaves are just passing parts of the tree.
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But because I've been thinking about trees and change I have started reading
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The Overstory by Richard Powers.
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It's a really really beautiful book um it's kind of fable -like
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and it follows nine I think different narratives
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that all um are tied together
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when a kind of natural catastrophe sort of ties them together it talks a lot about um trees
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and their importance and their perspective um
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and there's this one quote I kind of wanted to talk about here um it's kind of long
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but it goes the Greeks had a word Xenia Guest Friendship A command to take care of travelling strangers
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To open your door to whoever is out there
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Because anyone passing by far from home might be God
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Ovid tells the story of two immortals who came to earth in disguise to cleanse the sickened world
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No one would let them in But one old couple Borsis and Philemon did,
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and their reward for opening their door to strangers was to live an afterlife as a tree, an oak and a linden.
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huge and gracious and intertwined what we care for we will grow to resemble
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and what we resemble will hold us
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when we are us no longer i think that's a really beautiful little um tale there
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and um exenia i think is an ancient greek word for
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or law an ancient law of hospitality again correct me
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if i'm wrong there but when i looked up that's what that's what it means
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and there are particular parts that i want to talk about here
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which is when it says anyone passing by from home might be god far from home might be god
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and i've actually written here that knocking locking oneself in
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and locking the world out could stop you from something really profound happening to you something a lesson
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that is required or will touch you in a way
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that you you cannot imagine and i just love the idea
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that the the words itself it might be god
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and then the other parts i've also highlighted are
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that they become obviously an oak and a linden tree huge gracious
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and intertwined and so obviously yes they become trees
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which is their reward and then what we care for we will grow to resemble
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and what we resemble will hold up will hold us
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when we are us no longer such a lovely line um
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and i think this is kind of like allowing yourself to be changed by the things you care about
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and i think this is like is kind of the whole
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sentiment of this video here really rather than caring about very vain
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or shallow things which you know is that something you would like to resemble
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or would you rather rather than being hollow
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and fragile would you rather spend your life caring about your caring about art caring about ideas
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and nature and other people and the world
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and actually become to resemble these things that you have shown
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and poured love and care into like the tree will be rooted
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and expansive and layered and textured because I guess the real question is like
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when the physical facade begins to fade
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or change um annoyingly I think we would say fade
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but like I don't think age is fading
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I think age is just change what is left though to hold you
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and then I've written here is it the love you gave the wisdom you gathered the empathy you learnt
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and the roots you planted
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and from this like living on in the ecosystem of the lives we've touched can be achieved um
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and actually um this really makes me think of the artwork by Anna Mendieta.
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Her work is photographed but actually the work itself
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which was a lot of them were these kind of figures in the ground
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that had either been scorched with flames or
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flowers had been allowed to grow in them
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or waves had been allowed to tumble over these marked figures in the ground
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and they were allowed to change to to be
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and also to return back to the earth this cycle
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which is okay and i find that kind of comforting
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so i i don't know
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if this has been uh cohesive
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i feel like it's been such a long time since i've sort of made an essay like this
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and kind of put all my ideas together but I really hope
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that it's made you have a think about kind of these kind of almost vain pursuits of preservation
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and also harmful and fear -induced pursuits as opposed to kind of working on an inner self
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that you know you always have and will create like depth
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and layer and layers and it's okay you know for change for aging for
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that process to happen
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and in fact it's a privilege wow i sound really preachy
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that's not my intention um i just i feel passionate about it um
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so yeah finding beauty in every stage of life
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and even i suppose in in death and new life yes
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so anyway thank you so much for watching um i'm going to try
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and get back on the videos again
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because i am feeling a bit better i think thankfully um
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and i think this will also be on spotify um again thank you
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so much for sponsoring this video and i will see you all again next time
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Becoming Yourself Is More Important Than Preserving Yourself”. This video has 286 sentences and 3508 words to shadow. The speech runs for 24:58. The speaker talks at a steady 140 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| preserve verb | /pɹəˈzɝv/ | To protect; to keep from harm or injury. |
| iris noun | /ˈaɪ.ɹɪs/ | A plant of the genus Iris, common in the northern hemisphere, and generally having attractive blooms (See Iris (plant) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia ). |
| resemble verb | /ɹɪˈzɛmbəl/ | To be like or similar to (something); to represent as similar. |
| poem noun | /ˈpoʊ.əm/ | A literary piece written in verse. |
| consciousness noun | /ˈkɑnʃəsnəs/ | The state of being conscious or aware; awareness. |
| preservation noun | /ˌpɹɛz.əˈveɪ.ʃən/ | The act of preserving; care to preserve; act of keeping from destruction, decay or any ill. |
| bend verb | /bɛnd/ | To cause (something) to change its shape into a curve, by physical force, chemical action, or any other means. |
| sponsor noun | /ˈspɒn.səː/ | A person or organization with some sort of responsibility for another person or organization, especially where the responsibility has a religious, legal, or… |
| bury verb | /ˈbɛɹi/ | To outlive. |
| fade verb | /feɪd/ | To hit the ball with the shot called a fade. |
| vain adjective | /veɪn/ | Overly proud of oneself, especially concerning appearance; having a high opinion of one's own accomplishments with slight reason. |
| bulb noun | /ˈbʌlb/ | The bulb-shaped underground portion of a plant such as a tulip, consisting of a shortened stem and many fleshy scale leaves, from which the rest of the plant… |
| blossom verb | /ˈblɑ.səm/ | To have, or open into, blossoms; to bloom. |
| shadow noun | /ˈʃædəʊ̯/ | A dark image projected onto a surface where light (or other radiation) is blocked by the shade of an object. |
| flower noun | /ˈfloʊɚ/ | A reproductive structure in angiosperms (flowering plants), often conspicuously colourful and typically including sepals, petals, and either or both stamens… |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| break through verb | To gain popularity. | |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). | |
| look up verb | /ˌlʊk ˈʌp/ | To have better prospects. |
| bring up to verb | To raise (something) so that it reaches a particular standard or minimum requirement. | |
| cut through verb | To take a shortcut through. | |
| go away verb | To depart or leave a place. | |
| hold up verb | To wait or delay. | |
| look down verb | To lower one's eyes; to direct one's look downwards. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | i've also been learning · have been sitting · I've been thinking |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | you've not heard · has also won · i've spoken |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was born · being preserved · being allowed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | shell which is · someone who genuinely · Value which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 47 contractions and reduced forms, such as I've, I'm, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: aesthetic /ɛsˈθɛ.tɪk/, sixth /sɪksθ/, gather /ˈɡæðɚ/, grandfather /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌfɑðɚ/, grandmother /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌmʌðɚ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: consciousness /ˈkɑnʃəsnəs/, preservation /ˌpɹɛz.əˈveɪ.ʃən/, shadow /ˈʃædəʊ̯/, illusion /ɪˈl(j)uːʒ(ə)n/, gracious /ˈɡɹeɪʃəs/
- Long words — get the stress right: preservation /ˌpɹɛz.əˈveɪ.ʃən/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, temporary /ˈtɛmp(əˌɹ)ɛɹi/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, representation /ˌɹɛp.ɹə.zɛnˈteɪ.ʃən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like preserve, iris, resemble.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.