Shadowing Practice: Why We Can't Save Those We Love - Learn English Speaking with Video
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This video is sponsored by CursiosityStream and Nebula, a creator-owned streaming service where you can watch my videos completely ad-free, but more on this at the end.
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Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed?
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When Norman MacLean retired and finally sat down to write the story about the Montana of his youth, as his children had been encouraging him to do for a long time, he initially did so to explore his relationship with his younger brother Paul, who struggled with alcoholism and gambling addiction, and was beaten to death at the age of 32.
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“He did not want any big brother advice or money or help,” – Maclean wrote – “and, in the end, I could not help him.” I wonder to what extent he was aware of just how much his story, which he titled ‘A River Runs Through It,’ and which was later adapted to a film of the same name by Robert Redford, touched on a painfully universal human experience.
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Novelist Pete Dexter perhaps put it best when, in his 1981 profile on Maclean, he wrote: “It is about not understanding what you love, about not being able to help.
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It is the truest story I ever read; it might be the best written. And to this day it won’t leave me alone.” For me as well, A River Runs Through It has stuck with me for many years, just as many of the other stories that have engaged with this same fundamental question: why is it that we struggle so much to help those who are closest to us, those we should know and understand? Why can’t we save those we love?
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What was it like being married? - It's hard for sure, but there's something that feels so good about sharing your life with somebody.
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It is a wonderful thing, to get to know a person.
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To experience the process of gradually transforming an initial impression into a meaningful connection.
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Whether it is a bond formed between romantic partners, a parent and a child, between siblings or friends, the many stories that detail this universal phenomenon all share a similar beauty.
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The beauty of getting to know someone’s likes and dislikes, their hopes and dreams, fears and sensitivities.
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The beauty of, if you’re lucky, getting to learn someone’s secrets, the little details, the more hidden peculiarities that few others know about, that perhaps only you have the privilege of savoring.
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Those are the things I miss the most, those little idiosyncrasies that only I know about. That's what made her my wife It is the beauty of feeling like you truly understand someone, and in turn, to feel like you are understood by them, to feel like there is someone who knows you, the real you. And loves you for it.
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But in our house together, it was a sense of just trying stuff and allowing each other to fail and to be excited about things.
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You've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes.
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It is a wonderful thing, to get to know a person.
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To create a bond that seems to transcend language, making it feel like you can communicate your inners thoughts and feelings without effort, to feel like someone knows all that it is you want to say before you have spoken a single world.
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And to feel like you too can read that person from a mere glance, a look in their eyes, a slight change in their body language.
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To know all there is to know about them.
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It was exciting to see her grow and both of us grow and change together. But that's also the hard part.
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But as many of these stories also tell us, the experience is a fragile one as your connection to the other person, at any time, can be shattered by unexpected information, Dad, mom was cheating on you.
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something that, no matter how trivial, subverts your understanding of the person you thought you knew.
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Are you kidding me, who are you?
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It is here that you realize that no matter how well you know someone, no matter how much you think you understand someone, there always seems to be some part of them, some deeper essence, that eludes you.
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There are moments that I look at him, this kid that I raised, who I thought I knew inside and out, and I wonder who he is.
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In The Birth and Death of Meaning, Ernest Becker discusses extensively the implications of what seems to be a vital dualism in our human experience, the implications of having both an outside and an inside.
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Hello, I'm here.
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When we interact with people, we do so with our outside, with our exterior, our body; the physical and externally perceivable part of ourselves.
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You're like a nervous guy, huh? - No, no, no, I'm okay.
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And we experience of others the same thing, we see their face, we hear their voice, we experience their outward appearance.
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She seemed younger. No, not when she smiled.
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And how did he appear to her in this harsh classroom school lighting?
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But this is not where we perceive ourselves to be, for beneath the surface of our being, as Becker points out, “each of us walks about with a great wealth of interior life, a private and secret self.” This inner self, this strange place where we feel our true identity resides in, is utterly personal.
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It won’t show up when we stare at ourselves in the mirror, scrutinizing the face to which, as Becker continues, “all this” is happening, like some strange creature who is given self-awareness, but no knowledge of what this means, nor what to do with it.
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And just as we cannot expose this interior space in a mirror, so too are we unable to reveal it to others, that is, we cannot directly show them what is going on inside of us.
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We have to communicate it ourselves, and they have to do the same for us.
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Who are you? How do you get through? Connect?
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I think this is also why we have such an interest in biographical stories, be they documentaries or dramatized works, and why we make them about pretty much anyone, about great historical leaders, about musicians, authors, painters, about mavericks, scientists and astronauts, boxers, racecar drivers, ice skaters. From criminals to popes, kings to soldiers, highlife businessmen to vagabonds, the fundamental question of these stories remains the same: who were these people that walked among us?
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We often already know their exteriors, their achievements, their stories as they are or could be detailed on a Wikipedia page, but what was their interior like? What were they feeling, thinking? Who were they, really?
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Bruce was a nomad, but he was always drawn back to this place.
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His inner landscape? - His inner landscape, yeah.
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Landscape of his soul? - I think so.
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That is what we often desire to know, and precisely that which we cannot tell at face value.
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It has to be articulated, communicated, interpreted.
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How are you? - Uh, I'm fine.
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But this, as I’m sure we have all discovered, is easier said than done.
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When Becker looked at the world he saw a world that deals mostly in exteriors, in cultivated personalities, a world where one is expected to behave in a certain way, talk in a certain way, appear in a certain way, a world that increasingly detaches us from our own interior, and that increasingly leaves us struggling to truly connect with that of others.
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What do I mean to you? - What do you mean to me?
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“Often we want to say something unusually intimate to a spouse, a parent, a friend,” – Becker writes – “communicate something of how we are really feeling about a sunset, who we really feel we are – only to fall strangely and miserably flat.” You remember when, when you were a kid, and we used to just, please.
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And indeed, it seems true that whenever we try to say something that actually matters, when we try to express a real concern, a sincere feeling, that we tend to stumble the hardest.
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- You know, I do worry about you, Paul. - I think I'm gonna run over and...
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- What? - What?
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Once in a great while, as Becker also acknowledges, we do succeed in accurately communicating ourselves to others and getting a true enough glance into their interior in return.
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This is most likely to happen when we are younger, when we still have that explicit connection with our own interior, and still have the passion to truly try and connect it to that of others.
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Are you trying to say you want to kiss me?
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If we’re lucky, this is where we get to experience that wonderful thing of getting to know a person, if only for a moment.
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But for Becker, the uniqueness of this occasional break-through only proves the rule; that more often than not, whatever it is we want to communicate about our innermost selves, as he puts it, slithers away in exchanges of words that are somehow besides the point of what we are trying to say.
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I tell you that I love you unconditionally, I tell you that you're beautiful, I tell you that your ass looks great when you're 80. I’m trying to make you laugh.
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This friction between our longing to express ourselves, to connect with others, and our apparent inability to do so has also been described in an incredibly poignant and affecting poem by Rilke, who wrote: “You who never arrived in my arms, Beloved, who were lost from the start, I don't even know what songs would please you.
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I have given up trying to recognize you in the surging wave of the next moment.
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All the immense images in me – the far-off, deeply-felt landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and un-suspected turns in the path, and those powerful lands that were once pulsing with the life of the gods – all rise within me to mean you, who forever elude me.” Though he wrote these words to capture the pain of never meeting one’s true love, I think it also applies to those moments where we suddenly feel distanced from those who are closest to us, where we realize that we don’t know everything about them as we thought we did.
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What about you? - What about me?
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How are you?
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Such moments are perhaps most likely to arise whenever we are trying to help, whenever we are trying to directly influence the life of someone else.
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Because getting to know a person also means to get to know their shortcomings, their flaws, their internal obstacles that are holding them back, or negatively impact their lives in other ways.
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Most often, these are quite harmless, like having a partner who can’t seem to keep track of time and is always running late and stressing themselves out, or a sibling who seems to keep getting in her own way, but they can be more serious.
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Our loved ones may get into real trouble, they could be severely struggling, suffering.
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It’s about my son. He’s been doing all sorts of drugs.
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We're picking your brother up too much lately. - Is that right?
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What is it doing to him, and what can I do to help him?
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In situations like these, it is hard to ignore the urge to step in, to get involved and connect or reconnect to the person in need, to really understand what they are feeling, what they are going through, and by extension, what we can do to offer support.
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Why don't... Try to help us understand.
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If you need any money, Paul, Just, let us help you. - I can help.
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But the thing about trying to help in this way is that, more often than not, depending on what exactly is going on, the part that we are trying to change is not so much the external situation of the person in trouble, but rather their interior, something inside their character.
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You know, if only they would let us erase their bad habits, unburden them from their traumas, if only they would let us fix what is broken and they would be saved, they would be happy again.
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Nick, what you have, you're gonna find it again. You're gonna get it back.
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But it is precisely here that we are likely to once more find ourselves frustratingly incapable; stumbling over our words, running into walls, miscommunicating our good intentions.
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Let me, let me book you a room... - No, dad.
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... at a hotel for a couple of nights.
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Connor, can you, can you please turn that off? - Get out!
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For it is true, we can seldom help those closest to us.
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Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted.
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At worst, we can lose control of ourselves, lash out at the very person we were trying to help.
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I'm just trying to talk to you!
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You know what, you're the one who's doing it, you're the one who's causing it, and you're the only one who can stop it, fucking solve it!
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We too are, after all, only human, and we too are affected by the tragedies of our loved ones.
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No one truly suffers alone.
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Standing by, watching helplessly as someone close to us slips away, it is not easy.
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One series that beautifully captures this is HBO’s The Leftovers, which, even though I’ve only recently watched it for the first time, might just be the best TV show I have ever seen.
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Set three years after the Sudden Departure, the mysterious disappearance of two percent of the global population, the entire world finds itself in a state of collective grief.
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Among others, we follow Kevin, a man who hasn’t lost any members of his immediate family, yet still finds himself estranged from them.
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His wife, his daughter and son, the very people who were closest to him, who he thought he knew, have all drifted outside of his reach.
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But I just wanted to be with them, I wanted to hold them.
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And then I started to lose them, one by one.
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At first, it seems that this is because of the disruptive psychological effects of the Sudden Departure, but the reality, as we slowly learn, is that Kevin’s family was never that close and connected to begin with, there were always walls, barriers, secrets.
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As such, the Sudden Departure, and its fundamental mystery, didn’t so much change Kevin’s family as much as it revealed its true nature; revealed the truth that at the heart of everything and everyone we think we think we know and understand, of everything and everyone that we long to preserve, that we struggle to save, lies something unknowable, untouchable.
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In this sense, it’s really an existential matter too.
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You're home.
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One of the major through lines in The Leftovers is the struggle to find a feeling of home, of connection.
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It shows how much we rely on our relations with others to keep ourselves grounded, to make us feel secure and comforted, and subsequently, how damaging it can be when these relations are broken.
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It feels alienating, in a way, especially when we consider how many people there are in our lives we feel truly connected to in the first place.
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Because, when you really think about it, about how many people can you say, with absolute certainty, that you fully understand them, one? Two? Maybe three?
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I thought we were close. I thought we were closer than most fathers and sons.
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And so it makes sense that losing one of those can make you question the concept of human connection in its entirety, because if we cannot understand even those who are closest to us, who then?
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And inversely, is there anyone out there, who truly understands us?
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Who truly knows who we are?
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Once again, we might find ourselves staring into the mirror, scrutinizing our face in search of the “me” to which “all this” is happening, the unrevealable, unobservable self trapped somewhere behind these eyes, hopelessly isolated, and painfully alone.
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There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream.
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It is not now as it hath been of yore; — Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day. The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
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This excerpt from William Wordsworth’s poem “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” articulates how, in time, everything we know and think we understand changes.
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The poem is alluded to in A River Runs Through It, where, at the end, an old Norman Maclean reflects: “Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.” He thinks back to a conversation with his father, who kept asking him for more information about his brother in the years after his death; And finally I said to him, "maybe all I really know about Paul is that he was a fine fisherman." "You know more than that," my father said, "he was beautiful." And to me, there is something about this simple reply that feels profoundly important.
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I’ve talked about the concept of beauty before, the way we relate ourselves to it, and how frustration arises whenever we try to grasp it in its entirety.
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And I wonder to what extent this applies to our loved ones as well.
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It makes sense that we long to protect those we love, that we even feel responsible to do so.
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After all, these are the ones who are closest to us, the ones who we believe we know and understand, the ones who we should be able to help, right?
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But it is in that belief, as we’ve seen, that they are also the ones who can hurt us the most.
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My son is out there somewhere, and I don't know what he's doing! I don't know how to help him!
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Why are you doing this? - Please come home.
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I don't understand.
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Please come home!
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I couldn't help her. I couldn't help her.
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Why is it that people who need the most help, won't take it?
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I don't know, Jess.
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And look at us now, this isn't us, this is not who we are! - just, please, both of you, stop.
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I don't think you can save people, Vicki.
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Not being able to help, not being able to understand, it is a pain that is heartbreaking, and not to made light of.
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But for me, there was also a strange comfort in watching all these stories, the comfort of knowing that when something bad happens to a person who is close to us, regardless of their eventual fate, ultimately, it is not our fault.
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Look at me son. It’s not your fault.
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It’s not your fault. - It’s not your fault.
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We rely so much on those who are closest to us, but in the end, there is a part, an essence to them that we cannot reach, that is theirs alone.
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And... that’s okay.
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Because even though they may not be ours to save, as Norman Maclean’s father concluded, they will always be ours to love.
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And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us.
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But we can still love them.
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We can love completely without complete understanding.
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I love you, honey.
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What I feel for you is everything.
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I love you too.
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I love you more than everything. - Everything?
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Yeah, everything.
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Everything.
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Everything.
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While we’re on the subject of love and support, and helping those that you care about: I have been working together with dozens of other amazing creators like Philosophy Tube, Lindsay Ellis, Hbomberguy, Thomas Flight and many more, to build a new streaming service called Nebula.
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For example, on Nebula, you can watch an extended version of my video on sacred spaces in Skyrim, and you can see my series of shorts on Stoic philosophy in their full glory as one extended video.
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Again, all this, and more, can be found on Nebula. And the best part is, you can get Nebula for free by signing up for CuriosityStream.
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CuriosityStream is a streaming service with thousands of documentaries and nonfiction titles, like The Twilight of Civilizations, which is about the great empires of the past, and about how they too could not be saved.
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Exploring Human Connection: Insights from the Video
The video delves into the universal struggle of understanding and helping loved ones, using stories like *A River Runs Through It* to highlight the beauty and fragility of human bonds. It examines how we strive to know others deeply—their quirks, secrets, and inner selves—yet often fail to bridge the gap between exterior actions and interior truths. This exploration of connection and misunderstanding offers rich material for English learners, blending emotional depth with everyday language.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- "the little idiosyncrasies that only I know about" – Perfect for describing unique traits in loved ones.
- "allowing each other to fail and to be excited about things" – Useful for discussing relationships built on empathy.
- "level you with her eyes" – A vivid way to express how someone’s gaze can deeply affect you.
- "fall strangely and miserably flat" – Describes moments when communication fails to convey true feelings.
- "the real you" – A common phrase to talk about authentic self-expression.
Step-by-Step Shadowing Guide for This Video
Shadowing—repeating speech immediately after the speaker—is a powerful way to improve fluency. Here’s how to use this video effectively:
- Listen for rhythm: The video’s calm, reflective tone uses pauses to emphasize emotion. Mimic these pauses to capture the speaker’s intent. Tools like shadowspeaks or a shadowing site can help slow down the audio if needed.
- Focus on intonation: Phrases like "the truest story I ever read" rise and fall to convey conviction. Practice shadow speech by repeating these lines, matching the speaker’s pitch to convey feeling.
- Learn conversational flow: The dialogue includes natural interruptions and casual questions (e.g., "Who are you? How do you get through? Connect?"). Shadow these to master real-world interaction patterns.
- Break down complex sentences: Longer lines about human duality (e.g., "we cannot directly show them what is going on inside of us") can be split into chunks. Use shadow speak to repeat each chunk until smooth.
- Reflect on meaning: After shadowing, pause to explain the phrase in your own words. This links language to context, deepening understanding.
By using this video for shadowing, you’ll not only improve English but also gain insight into human connection—making learning both practical and meaningful. Learn English with videos like this to blend language skills with emotional intelligence.
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.