S4E9: You can’t spot brilliance from day one

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Thursday, and welcome to the LCP, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages, and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway.

So today, I want to start with a quote from John Koenig in his Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. He says, 

It’s fun to think of your favourite musicians, back when they were just starting out. Setting up to perform on a street corner at a time when nobody had any idea who they were. It makes you wonder: if you had been there, passing on the sidewalk as they played an early masterpiece, would you have noticed? Would you have stopped to listen? -p141

And in that passage, he was arguing that there is silience, or silent brilliance all around us, hiding in plain sight, just waiting to be noticed. But I loved that introduction because I think it highlights something else too. That we are surrounded by people who are on the first few chapters of what could turn out to be a life changing or soul changing adventure. And that’s a reflection that I wanted to bring to you today, language learners. 

It is so easy to imagine that on some level, an expert has always been an expert. That before they’d honed the skills, got the best tuition or earned the huge audiences and critical acclaim, they knew they were born for greatness and they were pulled along that path to mastery by some sort of magnetism. That they knew what they were doing, even if it was on some kind of subconscious level, and other people would have had their eye on them as one of those ones to watch.

But so much of the time, it’s just not true. A lot of great people, people that you admire, started just like you. Lost, confused, but with a bit of curiosity and a reason to do something. Some of them might have started as children but a lot didn’t. Some may have been born into a long line of linguists, or artists, or musicians, but a lot weren’t. And some of them may have stayed pretty faithful to the path they imagined when they started, but plenty didn’t.

So many of us hold ourselves back thinking that we need to be special or gifted to achieve things. The reality is, languages, art, music are inherently learnable, and thousands upon thousands of people are walking the many roads to get there. Having an innate talent might speed up the process a little bit, if it’s combined with a robust plan and plenty of consistent action. But even the people with innate talent start as beginners, as anonymous faces, wondering if what they want in life is possible.

But if we think of any potential adventure: the time we decide to learn Italian, the commitment to learn the guitar, the pull to start watercolour as an adult, how many of us stop at the end of chapter one or chapter two, because we haven’t seen that spark of brilliance? Because we’re waiting for a sign that if we just work hard enough, we could be one of the greats, but the sign didn’t come? What would have happened if we’d just kept going?

So don’t let being new put you off. Don’t let being confused put you off. And don’t worry about feeling lost. Because five years from now, people will be looking at you and wondering how you got where you did, and whether they could ever do that too. Just stick with it, one step at a time, and you will make that progress.

Remember, every tiny thing you achieve today counts, and every word matters. I will see you tomorrow.