I'm learning things, too.

This language learning stuff is really fascinating, and hard. It’s interesting to think about how phrases are constructed. The kicker comes when you have to let go of all of your rules to put some words together that if translated into English would be so disgustingly incorrect cringing would take place. They put phrases together that place words like “more” and “better” right next to one another, and it’s completely grammatically correct. Makes me gag just thinking about it. This said, rules are important and should be followed, but sometimes you just have to let go of all that you know in order to learn more, super cool stuff.

Madeleine L’Engle put it like this:

“Something almost always happens to startle us during the act of creating, but not unless we let go our adult intellectual control and become as open as little children. This means not to set aside or discard the intellect but to understand that it is not to become a dictator, for when it does we are closed off from revelation.”

~Walking on Water

We are a world. Not just America and Mexico and those almond-eyed folks that we see going to Saturday school. I only say this because, at one time in my life, I didn’t know better. I knew there were other countries, but I never thought about who inhabited them. That people live in those places wasn’t a thought in my mind. Did you know that Holland has a queen? And as for people not being able to point out America on a map, could you find Italy? Can you name all 7 continents? (I had to check with my friend and then do some googling, and that’s an easy one.) Do you know the difference between a country and a continent? Part of which continent is Iraq? Is every place that we know of on the earth inhabitable? Even Antarctica? I don’t think it is, but I’m not sure. (And today I see they are selling tickets to Antarctica on the web for penguin watching...I guess people do live there.)

And yeah, lots of people know the English language, but not everyone. I have met so many interesting people from all over the world and have been talking with them in Italian, a second language for me, but a third or fourth for many of the others. So, our conversations are limited. I’m sure they have so much more to say. I have so much more to say (this could also be a blessing, because I’m sure sometimes I have a bit too much to say). I like to know what moves people, and now that I am approaching the end of my stay in Italy, I am just beginning to be able to ask the kinds of questions that will bring unexpected answers. These are the answers that will inevitably increase my vocabulary and allow an acquaintance to become a real friend.

These are the events of my life that are bringing me closer to that utterly unattainable, yet worthy of the chase, “wholeness” for which I strive.