What if you never stopped?
When I was a teenager, I worked a summer job in an amusement park. That year, I made a bunch of friends from Taiwan, which inspired me to start learning Chinese. But in truth, I always had a love for Asian languages.
I grew up watching martial arts movies, and one of my favorite childhood memories was going to 48 Hour Video, (a cheaper version of “Blockbuster”).
If my parents were feeling generous, we got to pick two movies each. For me, it was always one horror movie, and one martial arts movie. If I couldn’t find a decent horror movie, I’d get two martial arts movies.
It didn’t matter if it was Chinese, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, Thai... I loved them all. The languages and cultures and architecture astonished me. When I started learning Chinese at 18, I just knew I’d be fluent one day.
I bought a program called “Fluenz”, some language books, and got to work. I studied a little each day, and practiced random words and phrases with my friends.
When I joined the Navy and got stationed in Guantanamo Bay, I had nothing but time and opportunity. This was gonna be the turning point.
And now, 15 years later...
I know about 10 words/phrases in Chinese. Yeah... so much for those wild ambitions.
And while I don’t have any regrets about not learning Chinese, I often think back and wonder where I’d be if I’d just kept it up over these past 15 years.
In the moment, progress feels so slow, that we get it into our minds that we’ll never get to our goal. So we quit.
But looking back I think, “wow, if I’d just done a little Chinese every day for the last decade and a half, I’d be fluent!”. (Or at least damn close to it)
And that’s the funny thing about the passage of time. We don’t learn the language, or the instrument, or write the novel, or whatever, because we think it will take too long. The irony of course, is like the saying goes:
“The time will pass anyway”
Now that I’m writing again, I find myself reflecting back on those Chinese learning days. If I keep writing, learning, refining, improving... where will I be in 15 years?
Maybe I won’t be a great writer, and maybe no one will know my name, but I would be a hell of a lot better than I am today, and isn’t that what really matters?