The Shy Person Who Thought
Each day, I pass by many people. They are all walking somewhere too as I walk to my own destinations. These people are alone and comfortable on their own tracks. I greet one, and in a few instants we become the best of friends. This is possible because there are so few before me who have laid footsteps for me to follow.
Because the rarity of my actions brings value to my actions. I understand this. These people have tireless thoughts to relay. The places they are walking towards. The places they’ve walked to before. The destinations, having changed by time. The numerous roads not taken.
I know my worth. I do not bother; I offer relief. This is how little events create friendships. Intimate friendships of a lifetime.
A shy person imagines many things. This shy person, in any parallel world, may have imagined these same things through the same day. This shy person, in any parallel world, may have seen the same people walk by and bothered only but one of them.
And as it played out, in this alternate world, the world of a daydreamer, new best friends were made.
But, today, a shy person passes by many people and greets not one of them for all are strangers.
In a world of shy people.
October 27, 2009 at 6:38 pm | Reflections | No comments
Spanish and Life Passions
Yesterday evening, I signed up for Rosetta Stone’s site Shared Talk. Ever since, I can only say that my life is now complete. Ever since, I can only say my Spanish knowledge has been incomplete. Ever since, I have foreseen that I would write an article about my experiences on the site.
I was seeking to truly personalize the language Spanish in my life. The nature of my academic career leans towards that I would cease to learn Spanish in my second year, after taking Spanish II. Since I have found myself genuinely passionate about the two foreign language classes I had taken in the past, Spanish I and Latin I, I had, upon realizing I probably would not continue the high school Spanish track, believed I could only overcompensate for my lack of classes.
Thus, I found the Shared Talk while searching for a way to find Spanish pen pals, native speakers who I could learn from. Seeing Shared Talk, I was surprised but truly ecstatic to have found an apparently omnipotent solution to my dilemma. Shared Talk was everything I was looking for; a facility beaming with lifefulls of native speakers of all languages and all the tools we’d need to teach each other… Chat, mail, and voice chat.
I had started off finding a few native speakers of Spanish on the site to mail, but while waiting for replies, I tried out the voice chat. I quickly met a nice man who was an engineer seeking to learn English, but I was all too easily intimidated. Though I never for once assumed that passing one year of Spanish with flying colors would equip me with all that I needed to hold a conversation with a native speaker, I was all too quickly struck full-blown with the force of my incompetence. And I was inspired.
It was then that I arranged for myself a fair schedule of learning. I would start off sending mails to native speakers of Spanish. In writing letters, I could take my time and look up the vocabulary required for me to write what I wanted to write. As I saw that I started writing letters more proficiently and knew the vocabulary needed for me to express myself properly, I would move onto real-time chatting, where I would be required to respond and read quickly.
All through this, I would softly read the Spanish I type and receive to myself out loud so that one day, I may voice chat in a foreign language without guilt of my awkward nonresponsiveness.
And at the end of the day, I can rest assured with myself that Spanish was not just a class; it was the start of a life passion.
September 12, 2009 at 8:31 pm | Lifepost | No comments
Backspace
Internet chatting is not the same as face to face conversation.
This is a truth which all newbies, to either world(though help come to those for whom internet chatting is the first), learn quickly.
Backspace is a convenient key.
Those who strive to guard themselves from regret learn quickly that passiveness is its truest precedent.
I had typed more words in this article, but I backspaced them out.
Now, empty, I ponder and wonder.
If those lost words were truly worth the extra keystrokes.
September 7, 2009 at 8:12 pm | Reflections | No comments