You want to get the guitar piece exactly right but still trip up once in a while. How do you react?
You want to run a marathon but can’t even finish half a marathon yet. How do you react?
You want to explain how you feel but end up feeling misunderstood. How do you react?
Do you let frustration hold you back?
Or do you use the gap as leverage to change your actions and bridge the gap between your current and desired identity?
Learning a foreign language is both a frustrating and liberating experience.
We can focus on the frustration of not understanding the words the way we understand our mother tongue. Or we can realize that without the words, we are free to fall back on other ways of capturing and understanding meaning.
A crying baby can be soothed by words it does not yet understand, because she senses what’s behind the sounds, lets the meaningless melody cradle her to sleep…
Similarly, we don’t always have to know what’s behind the words, as long as we make an effort to understand the meaning behind the sounds.
Hearing a foreign language brings us back to that wordless world the way we experienced it as a newborn, before we tried so hard to put everything within and around us into language.
It makes us remember, there’s more to life than our words will ever allow us to express. And somehow, that’s a soothing thought.
Most people don’t really want the freedom to do anything they want, in other words, a life without constraints.
They want the freedom to set their own constraints.
To decide, “I want to spend my time writing,” instead of saying, “I am supposed to become a lawyer because that’s what we do in this family.”
To decide, “I don’t drink alcohol,” instead of saying, “My social circle forces me to have a glass when I’m out.”
To decide, “I want to live in that house, drive that car, and go on that exotic holiday, and I’m going to make it happen,” instead of saying, “I’m constrained by my talent, potential, current job, or where I grew up.”
To decide, “I have time to learn a new language because it’s important to me,” instead of saying, “I’m too busy, I can’t (or don’t deserve to) do anything nice for myself.”
Good or bad, beneficial or misguided, constraints are always there.
Because life constantly forces you to make decisions, and every decision leads to a new constraint.
Since it’s challenging to be aware of your decisions and their long-term constraining effects, which constraints do you consider important enough to set consciously (and spend considerable time and effort doing so)?
Where do you allow others to dictate the constraints you live within?
Who do you allow to dictate the constraints you live within?
Pick your freedom battles.
Knowledge transfer always implies time collapse. Because learning an insight from someone else usually takes less long than figuring it out yourself.
Take books. The writer usually spent considerable time researching and distilling the topic and coming to good insights (time I might not be able to dedicate).
Thanks to that writer, I can now consume that knowledge in, say 6-12 hours of reading the book. A considerable time collapse…
But when does time collapse go to far?
Can I read a 1-page summary of that book and truly say I grasp the topic?
When your brain gets space to breathe, knowledge grows and nuance shows. It needs time and repeated exposure to absorb information, make connections, and discover new insights.
So a one-page summary isn’t necessarily too shallow… On the contrary: it collapses time so much that information becomes very dense.
What with the evolution towards short-form online content? The primary purpose of TikTok videos and Instagram reels might be to entertain, but the trend is clear and spills over into education, our attention span, and knowledge transfer: shorter, more shallow, yet more dense.
Too little time collapse and we can’t make progress.
Too much time collapse and knowledge collapses with it.
When progress seems slow
Maybe even invisible
And still, every day you show
That you know
Where you’re going
That’s where you truly grow.
You don’t need a motivational speech.
But you may need a reminder of who you choose to be, and what the person you choose to be would do right now.
And once you remember, you’ll have all the motivation you need.
Now is the time to put my heart on the line.
Because whatever I do at this very moment is a direct vote for who I want to be.
But before I let the gravity of the moment paralyze me, I realize – this is not my first vote, and it won’t be my last.
Another present moment will soon arrive, and with the passing of time, another opportunity to put my heart on the line.
Too much pressure on one moment leads to perfectionism and paralysis.
Too much focus on “this one moment doesn’t matter” leads to defeatism and lethargy.
Be intentional about the present moment because it’s the only vote you can directly influence.
Then be aware of the aggregate of your actions because your identity emerges from the majority of your votes.
Who do you choose to be?
