A language is just an information stream. And information doesn’t even care what species you are (Alex the parrot spoke and understood real English; many non-human primates know sign language; many housepets understand basic speech), let alone your precious backstory.

Information. Nothing is more neutral. Nothing is cheaper. Nothing gives you more bang for less buck for longer — but you’ve got to be real; it’s weird; like, you’ve got to be both delusionally hopeful (on the surface at least) and brutally real at the same time; you can’t kid yourself that your school test scores represent real ability (down that road lies shame, shock and disappointment), but you’ve got to also see your atomic actions as cosmically valuable.

And this isn’t just true of “foreign” languages, but even subdomains within a language. Learning, say, financial jargon just in English will change your life. Utterly.

It’s just a stream. Plug in. Input the stream. Imitate the stream and you win.