There is no doubt about it. Living to amuse yourself is lonely and pathetic.
But so is living to impress the Joneses. That lifestyle leaves you feeling plenty empty inside; it’s always psychologically impoverishing and often monetarily so as well. One either dies trying to fill one’s life with the accoutrements of Jonesiness (BTW, I have IRL friends who are Joneses and they’re the nicest people in the world), or “succeeds” in doing so only to realize that, well, one has won gold at the Idiot Olympics.
It can be sobering to realize that everything you own will eventually end up as trash, burned or buried — even your own body. Are not cemeteries merely human landfills? Not to mention the whole “the Sun will turn red giant and burn the Earth to a crisp” story. And so you are literally buying trash and competing over trash. Living in urban Japan forces these kinds of realizations to hit you early and continually — since living spaces are so small, you’re either an episode of Hoarders or you’re constantly throwing “perfectly good” things away; at first it feels bad, but then it feels good.
If hypocrisy were blood sugar, I would be dead and my body would taste sweet. Whether by constitution or conditioning, I’ve been competitive — stupidly, pettily so — from an early age. I’m afraid of literally everything except cats and leashed dogs, so I like to live in low places — low floors in hotels and apartment buildings; I like being able to just up and leave the building without recourse to an elevator; I like it where my cats can safely jump out a window. Yet, whenever I board an elevator, and someone else pushes a higher-floor button than me, I feel like less of a person.
That’s pretty effing petty. And it doesn’t take a Zen monk with forty years of experience in the meditation industry to realize how dumb this all is. Anyone living in an apartment building or a hotel is a pawn; the real baller is the owner of a building. So comparing penis size or (as the case may be) floor height is like being two medieval soldiers having an arm wrestling competition: you’re still a pawn in a chess game being played by the king; he’s gonna wind you up with some BS speech about the feast of Saint Crispin; you’re gonna fight for him and lose your life or a limb and/or get multiple infections, oh, and, after this is all over, the king will be boinking some erstwhile enemy French princess who smells of peaches and Camembert cheese. But, yeah, nice job with the arm wrestling, maybe some toothless bar wench with armpit lice will smile at you.
「I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.」
─ Agatha Christie
A lot of the deeper-thinking personal development people will tell you that the only reason we do anything is because we think it’ll make us feel good. So, ultimately, it’s all about experiencing a certain set of pleasant emotional states, particularly that of you liking yourself. It’s a compelling idea.
And if it is indeed correct, then you’re likely to find that living to amuse yourself is not only easier (and thus smarter) but also funner. The only reason we even do “hard” things is if and because they (are said to) make life easier overall. Human beings always choose (what they perceive to be) the easy route. Even people who join cults that make them suffer physically, do so to be relieved of the intellectual burden of realizing that the AJATT cult is the only true cult I mean thinking for themselves.
What does any of this pseudo-profound ersatz philosophy have to do with getting used to languages?
Everything.
There’s plenty of intellectual jockery associated with language learning, and it’s just as dumb as regular, physical jockery. It’s just as meaningless. Language learning is perhaps the only field in my life where I’ve largely set myself free from competition, and that allows me to take risks and run experiments, which leads to even more progress and, dare I say it, success.
Stephen Covey famously wrote and spoke about the private victory that precedes the public victory. I have found that, in modern life, where we live (for better or worse, often for better) quite separated from other people, for language skill to be created and maintained, the bedroom matters more than the classroom: the things you do in your bedroom, the books you read there, the TV you watch there, the languages you use there, that’s your real life, that’s your own private world. It’s when this world becomes filled with, say, Japanese, that you’ll see outer manifestations of fluency.
But that almost won’t matter, because it’s all for and about you anyway. You don’t even care that you won the marathon, you were just having a fun jaunt — very Forrest Gumpy. I kid you not, you may literally not notice. Strangers come and go. Even family can become impermanent if you move around a lot. But you’ll be there. Impress yourself. Amuse yourself. Entertain yourself. Quantify yourself. Record yourself. Compete with yourself.
Or not. I dunno. Maybe I’m just lame and antisocial and trying to justify it 😀 .
PS: I used “aspy” as an adjective rather than a noun. Prolly also misspelled it. Oh, the horror 😉 .
This is what I keep telling people, they think I am very weird except they can’t explain why I look 18 still and I am 31.
Cause all those little moments add up and break you down, can’t you use compound interest and accomplish the same thing in the grand scheme anways?
Like the Gorillaz, it’s a band with 2 people. They created an anime world to describe the things they want to teach, but they didn’t have to find the cast of their band. They just created them.
When I learned Chinese, I was only competing against myself. Later someone I knew tried to learn Korean, but competed with me and gave up after 2-3 weeks. ‘If I did Korean as much as you did Chinese I would be fluent by now’ they would say.
Well, duh.
The only difference was this person wasn’t mentally up to it, because rather than learning the language for their own sake they were trying to impress others. This person announced to everyone that they were learning Korean and boasted about their progress within the first week or two, but eventually the pressure became too much.
By contrast, I kept my Chinese learning secret from my immediate family and friends. I learned it for my own sake. Even now that I can understand Chinese media made for Chinese people, most of my common acquaintances don’t know I understand any Chinese, because it was never about them.
As you say, the only reason people do anything is to experience the emotional state they desire. Even if they deliberately inflict suffering on themselves, the ultimate goal is personal security.
Thus, I learned Chinese for my own well-being. That’s why it has stayed with me. The problem most people have is that they learn so other people think they are doing well, and since people have minds of their own this is a flimsy excuse to do anything.
I once read a quote along the lines of ‘once one understands how to be alone, they will never be lonely’
了解孤獨, 就不寂寞。
Mindset is everything.
allot of toilet-flushing-dripping-action here.
yes we ironically often start to think after robbery and castrations. that’s the default error that happens en masse.
To find the right path in thinking, you have the start with nothing when literally nothing is missing.
thinking of nothingness as being the truth creates a theoretical climate profoundly alien for complaining people, something different then any differentiation through opinion can bring to light. animals are bastards, and they backup everything as a lack, becoming so alienated that the contact with a mind that originated from wealth is a thread. ‘reprove him who offends the lack’ echo’s from collective of bastards everywhere.
the fundamental discovery of modernity is not that the earth revolves around the sun, but that money encircles the earth. so deal with it. D.E.A.L.
here power kicks in. but screw power, all vested interests and all these complicated circular movements in data and the bullshit cosmic fart universe we live in. woman win anyway.
you are right: it is aloneness not loneliness. loneliness is just an old everlasting habit since ‘birth’ to be nurtured.
the dogma of the ‘primary loneliness of man’ is created and maintained by modernity. even outside the non-transparent america.
people want to be radical and deep, being marketed more triumphantly than ever before.
to speak with a moral voice, just freaking heat your private life above the freezingpoint – and do what you want.
also don’t try to be Tim Ferriss, not because americans are:
1. enchanted in the american religion of ‘quality and results’ trying to collect ‘experience/thoughts/declarative memory’
2. a collective of bastards
so NO! that’s all wrong to begin with. to do list or not to do list, different means, same shit end.
i like being an NPC.
NPC’s seem half-stupid, but they are not.
they seem local, master of repetition, lobsided, but it’s the opposite!
I found even competing against myself was to much stress. I know, I know, I should just record and compare later but that’s not how it works in my mind! When I’m recording I’m think about the comparison that I will have to make at some point. And one thing I hate is loosing face against myself. So i’m thinking about the results when I’m recording.
I found the solution though…. wait for it…. I said WAIT…. Don’t record!
My life has been a lot better when I know I don’t have to improve, because I don’t have any facts to compare to. I don’t even know how much time I spend on doing Japanese stuff. Part of that was me trowing out the SRS (except for kanji, gotta do kanji man…)
The best part is to just let the improvement hit you! You will have moments when you think “Damn, am I really reading this?? Look at it, all kanji and everything”. So, yeah, my mind still records stuff, that’s what it does, can’t help it. But it’s not putting any stress on me. Not like those horrible numbers do.
I guess everyone has to find there own way. Some people like to compete with others and it drives them forward. If that is you, don’t hold back, compete to your hearths content. But if you’re as lazy as me, just have fun and stop caring. Set up the environment, get into good habits and enjoy the ride.