Having "Distance to Oneself" in English

There's a wonderful Polish phrase which there is no proper equivalent for in English: dystans do siebie, literally: distance to yourself or oneself.

It is very widely used here, and regarded as something unequivocally positive. In fact, in Poland, it may well be the most commonly given answer to the question of what quality in other people is the most important/valuable.

As for the meaning, that's somewhat elusive.

Answers to the question of what having dystans do siebie actually involves tend to be somewhat varied. Most explanations will mention something about the ability to laugh at oneself. But this seems to be more of a guideline of how to notice it than a definition, and it's not obvious at all what this has to do with the notion of distance. It seems to me that dystans is much more than the ability to laugh at oneself (even though it invariably involves this). It is something that you kind of know when you see it, but putting your finger on what it really means is hard.

Rather than simply a quality embodied in specific actions, like: kindness, generosity, envy and so on; dystans presents itself to us as an entire personality schema characterised by many different character traits which appear to be downstream from the actual "distance" that the term refers to.

While dystans is easily spottable, it is far from obvious what is going on, as it were, "behind the scenes", in short, it's not obvious what dystans really is at bottom. And there is no popular rigorous way to define it that gets really gets at this.

But it is worth considering what dystans really is.

As mentioned, dystans shows itself most unmistakably in a person's gentle and affectionate amusement with their own mistakes and vices; in the ability to appreciate the irony in their own inward and outward contradictions.

At its heart, dystans has to do with self-awareness, and the awareness of a separation between the present you, and the past you. Whenever you observe yourself and your behaviour, you are invariably observing an echo or reflection of yourself -- a past version. There is a historical distance between the you that observes and the you that is observing.

To be aware of this separateness -- this distance -- is to understand that the vices or bad habits that you see in yourself are not bound to plague you in the present or future, in short, that they don't define you. It is a common illusion that your past mistakes must define you, and so to have dystans is to be free from this illusion.

This awareness eliminates the fear of looking at your own mistakes and wrongdoing. Because they are no longer demons that you feel like you must hide or run away from, instead now you realise that they are all in the past, and the version of you that committed them no longer exists. All that is left are the consequences transmitted by your past, and since you can unremittingly look at this past from a safe distance, you can much better navigate these consequences in the present. In short, you can learn from your mistakes.

This allows for self love to flourish also, because by not being scared to analyse past mistakes, you can understand why you made them, forgive yourself, and feel that you can now be better and deserve to be happy.

Humour then also comes easily into the self-observation process. The two main ingredients in humour are absurdity and comprehensibility -- two antonyms which, when they both hit you at the same time, make you laugh.

This mode of self awareness lets you look at something you have done and see at once a) why you did it (comprehensibility), and b) why it was silly (absurdity). And this is why there is this constant hue of self amusement so peculiar to someone with good distance, because the two main ingredients of humour are a continual by-product of the personality schema.

So, how can we say that someone has dystans do siebie in English?

The go-to translation of this phrase is "not taking yourself too seriously", but I find this to be woefully inadequate.

Sure, anyone who takes themselves too seriously lacks dystans do siebie, but the converse doesn't hold: many people who can be said to "not take themselves too seriously" definitely do not have good dystans. Picture class clown types and people who lark around all the time, perhaps because of insecurity. Basically, these are people who don't take themselves seriously enough, and have a kind of sloppy nonchalance about everything.

So, the two do not mean the same thing.

Dystans is a distinct and definite form of self awareness. You can't have "too much of it". Additionally, separation from the past allows acknowledgement of past mistakes, and how serious they might have been, because it takes the emotional sting out of processing this information. In this way, rather than non-seriousness, dystans is associated with appropriate seriousness.

So, the two are definitely not the same thing.

The brilliant thing about the term dystans do siebie is that it so well describes what you must do in order to embody it. The vagueness of "non serious" fails to do this, and may even do the opposite. The injunction to "not take yourself too seriously" can encourage phony ignorant nonchalance -- narcissistic down-playing of past mistakes and vices, that belays terrible discomfort with them, and ultimately a total lack of dystans. This behavioural complex is truly an epidemic in England!

So let's abandon this translation entirely. To diverge from the literal translation like this is lose the entire power of the phrase.

Instead, I say we go as literal as possible with: "distance or separation (from self)", maybe "self-separation" or "self-distance".

Another better alternative to "non serious" is "Doesn't get hung-up on/about him/herself". This one better signposts the broad theme of what you are saying -- people will know it has to do with insecurity. It is also dialectically close to the notion of distance -- for one thing to be hung on something else, there can't be any distance between the two things. But I feel this translation still lacks the beautiful simplicity of "distance".

So maybe it's best to use the two in conjunction:

-"He has good distance".

-Wym?

-"I mean, like, distance from himself."

-"Wym?"

-"It's a Polish phrase, it means he, like, doesn't get hung up about himself and stuff."

Yeye I swym. That's true.

I think "good distance" might be more understandable to English speakers than many would expect. Especially in the right context.

When you say about such a person with this inexplicable but striking quality of character that they have "good distance", and say it with meaningful emphasis, the person listening (if they know who you mean) will likely guess what you are referring to quite quickly, and may well connect the dots between this oddly simple phrase and this peculiarly charming character quality. If you need to clarify what you mean a little, then that's also not the end of the word either.

In Poland (when speaking English), I choose to simply treat it as a loan phrase and say the Polish one.

Everyone talks in their own style. In fact, in England, where we have lots of regional variations of accents and slang, inventing words and phrases is pretty normal, even within friend cliques. Some of my friends have adopted Polish words after visiting me here, words like agent, menel and reklamówka -- things that they associate with Poland because they are inexplicably different in nature here, or because they simply like the feel of the word better for that thing.

At any rate, the "non-serious" thing needs to go, not just as a translation for dystans do siebie, but as a posture that way too many English people adopt to mask their insecurities and guilt. In England, not only do we desperately need a way of saying dystans do siebie, but we also desperately need more of it. And these two go hand in hand. So let's see if we can't make it catch on!