My time in Italy will be coming to an end in the next few days.
My main reason for going on this trip was to immerse myself in the Italian language. I had started learning Italian during the pandemic. Over the past few years, it has been an on again, off again endeavor, but I still wanted to improve. I had been to Italy in the past, but only for a week, and I figured that if I stayed for a month or more, I would be able to really grasp the language.
I’ve learned that this belief is far from true.
If you really want to learn a language, you need to speak it. Every day. While I have enjoyed my time in Italy, I have been alone most of the time, and therefore not speaking to anyone in Italian. The few days that I did spend with my relatives in Sicily, I was forced to use the language to communicate. Every thought, phrase, question, and response needed to be carefully planned in my mind in Italian. Within those few days, I could feel myself being drawn closer and closer to Italian.
While I have not made the progress that I would have liked to have made, my Italian is probably the best it’s ever been, and I at least have that to be proud of.
I have been thinking a lot about how to continue my language learning studies once my time in Europe has ended. Should I throw in the towel and spend my time prioritizing other things? Should I double down and take it more seriously by paying for a good teacher? While learning languages is something that I enjoy doing, I have no dire need for Italian or French or Spanish in my life.
Often in life, we set grandiose goals for ourselves that we never had a shot of achieving alone. The specifics of these goals are different for everyone, but they all generally take the same size and shape—climbing Mount Everest, visiting all seven continents, writing an epic novel, or learning languages, as in my case.
But if we focus purely on the final goal, we lose the bigger picture. Maybe you didn’t make it up Mount Everest, but you hiked 20,000 feet in preparation. And maybe you didn’t hit all seven continents, but you still made it to five. And maybe you didn’t write an epic novel, but you still cranked out a collection of poems.
And maybe I didn’t learn to speak Italian fluently before or after this trip, but at least I took the trip. Without taking the first step to make it a reality, I never would have been able to taste the street food of Palermo or the bicerin in Turin or the fondue in Zurich. I wouldn’t have seen the countless paintings, sculptures, and frescoes by some of the most well-known artists in history. And I wouldn’t have admired the ornate architecture of dozens of cathedrals, churches, and museums that I visited during my travels.
Finish lines are always moving—closer, further, in reach, out of reach. It doesn’t really matter if you make it as long as you don’t lose sight of what you’ve accomplished along the way.
As Norman Vincent Peale said, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
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My time in Italy will be coming to an end in the next few days.
My main reason for going on this trip was to immerse myself in the Italian language. I had started learning Italian during the pandemic. Over the past few years, it has been an on again, off again endeavor, but I still wanted to improve. I had been to Italy in the past, but only for a week, and I figured that if I stayed for a month or more, I would be able to really grasp the language.
I’ve learned that this belief is far from true.
If you really want to learn a language, you need to speak it. Every day. While I have enjoyed my time in Italy, I have been alone most of the time, and therefore not speaking to anyone in Italian. The few days that I did spend with my relatives in Sicily, I was forced to use the language to communicate. Every thought, phrase, question, and response needed to be carefully planned in my mind in Italian. Within those few days, I could feel myself being drawn closer and closer to Italian.
While I have not made the progress that I would have liked to have made, my Italian is probably the best it’s ever been, and I at least have that to be proud of.
I have been thinking a lot about how to continue my language learning studies once my time in Europe has ended. Should I throw in the towel and spend my time prioritizing other things? Should I double down and take it more seriously by paying for a good teacher? While learning languages is something that I enjoy doing, I have no dire need for Italian or French or Spanish in my life.
Often in life, we set grandiose goals for ourselves that we never had a shot of achieving alone. The specifics of these goals are different for everyone, but they all generally take the same size and shape—climbing Mount Everest, visiting all seven continents, writing an epic novel, or learning languages, as in my case.
But if we focus purely on the final goal, we lose the bigger picture. Maybe you didn’t make it up Mount Everest, but you hiked 20,000 feet in preparation. And maybe you didn’t hit all seven continents, but you still made it to five. And maybe you didn’t write an epic novel, but you still cranked out a collection of poems.
And maybe I didn’t learn to speak Italian fluently before or after this trip, but at least I took the trip. Without taking the first step to make it a reality, I never would have been able to taste the street food of Palermo or the bicerin in Turin or the fondue in Zurich. I wouldn’t have seen the countless paintings, sculptures, and frescoes by some of the most well-known artists in history. And I wouldn’t have admired the ornate architecture of dozens of cathedrals, churches, and museums that I visited during my travels.
Finish lines are always moving—closer, further, in reach, out of reach. It doesn’t really matter if you make it as long as you don’t lose sight of what you’ve accomplished along the way.
As Norman Vincent Peale said, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
