If, in defiance of every limiting belief you have about yourself, you started to write every day, and you’re sticking to it, what else can you do that you previously thought impossible?
This is how the world becomes your oyster.
You’re a writer now.
And that means you’re starting to have a shot at being a good writer.
I can believe I must understand the theory before I engage in practice, or I can believe that theory makes more sense when it explains my practice.
Theory and practice are partners, and more often than not, it should be practice that leads the dance.
Memory is context – in language and in general.
Context of words surrounded by other words and sounds within a sentence.
Context of words surrounded by actions – actor, action, object affected (in whatever way or order your mother tongue expresses it).
Context of words and the images they spur.
Context of words and the feelings they evoke.
When learning another language, you can link words to the context of your mother tongue.
But to truly understand them, you’ll have to create a new context too.
For example, an apple in Spanish: una manzana.
Seemingly the same object, now perceived through new sounds.
New actions.
New images.
New feelings.
Keeping all that in mind, are we really still talking about the same object? Is the Spanish manzana encerada that made me sick in Spanish the same as the apple my grandpa helped me pick? If it is, do I now have a richer perception of that object that once up on a time, I could only interact with through the limits of one language?
Learning vocabulary lists with isolated words will never get you fluent in a foreign language.
If you don’t build a new context of sounds, actions, images, feelings, you’ll always keep imposing your mother tongue on the foreign language.
That’s why you can’t just learn a foreign language. You have to live it.
If only you could pierce through the veil
See what’s on the other side
Which aspirations are pipe dream
Which ones you must pursue
If only certainty would be your share
If you’d know what, how, where
Would you really be happier?
Or would life lose it’s flair?
I don’t always have to feel like writing to know I want to be a writer.
But to be a writer, I must write.
So I write.
There is no other way.
Nobody says you should take time every day to disconnect from the world and listen to your stream of consciousness.
But let’s say you would.
What do you hear?
Desires? Fear?
A blurry memory, now suddenly clear?
A cry for help to which you’ve turned a deaf ear?
That fierce inner voice just wants you to be, listen, persevere,
and tell it
You’re safe. I hear you. I’m here.
When you make space to listen to yourself and let solitude soothe you, fear melts away and you might just find something that makes you want to put your heart on the line.
ChatGPT can write in 10 seconds what would take you hours.
We’re entering an era where what makes us valuable is not economic output anymore.
We can try to compete.
Or we can rethink what still makes our lives valuable when we’re economically obsolete.
I write for the sake of writing.
I play chess for the sake of playing chess.
I learn for the sake of learning.
I sing for the sake of singing.
I love my family for the sake of loving my
I live for the sake of living.
When we lose our economic value, value lies in life itself again.
