Six months ago I began a journey of practicing mindfulness every day and we've reached day 203. Yesterday, I talked about the mastering the art of practice. Today is a new day.
I'm not particularly religious, but I took this test as a challenge. I wanted to see where my comprehension of the language was at and whether I could logically put things together enough to form at least a basic understand of the content and what the questions were asking of me. Even though I've been living in Japan for over a year my mind is still tired from one hour of concentrating in another language.
The benefit to living in Japan is that I am practicing my Japanese (in one way or another) every day even if I'm not actively studying. I'm surrounded by the culture and each day feels like the first raindrops of a rainy day trickling down my head and slowly soaking through my clothes. With enough time and exposure babies learn their home language. In the same way I'm slowly making improvements in my Japanese with every experience.
This applies to anything we're working toward. Progress is like drops of flowing water transforming the earth it interacts with upon falling. It might be slow at first and we might feel like we're stuck at a dead-end, but with enough time we begin to notice a transformation and we become something different as a result.
Being in Japan has changed me in a lot of ways and the influence the culture has had on me has also helped me to understand the thinking behind the language. Although studying through books can help make sense of certain expressions, actually living here and learning about how the Japanese think is an invaluable experience that has furthered my understanding by so much. As I continue to dive deeper I'll keep changing and the result will be someone with better mastery of the language and these skills will open up a lot of doors for me in the future. What I'll end up becoming is anyone's guess.
This experience has reminded me that no matter how high the hurdle, with enough practice I'll be able to take that test again with a fuller understanding of the materials. Eventually I know that I'll even be able to read the more difficult kanji and gain a near native-level understanding of the language. I've made definitive progress since last year and I know I have a lot more to learn, so I'm looking forward to taking on the next challenge step by step until there's nothing that can stop me. Nothing is impossible for us to achieve if we're willing to continue working toward it.
Peace
"Water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow." - PlutarchThese last few weeks I've been studying to take a test on Buddhism in Japanese (they have tests for pretty much everything it seems) and today was the day to prove whether I could make it or not. I'll be honest, my Japanese isn't the best. I can have casual conversations (sometimes deep ones, but it's hard to get my points across sometimes), but when it comes to reading kanji and understanding literature I'm severely lacking. I took the test, was confused by a lot of the kanji (especially considering the Buddhist scriptures use kanji and dialect from the 1200's), wasn't too confident about my ability, and ended up thinking about how much more I want to improve my Japanese.
I'm not particularly religious, but I took this test as a challenge. I wanted to see where my comprehension of the language was at and whether I could logically put things together enough to form at least a basic understand of the content and what the questions were asking of me. Even though I've been living in Japan for over a year my mind is still tired from one hour of concentrating in another language.
The benefit to living in Japan is that I am practicing my Japanese (in one way or another) every day even if I'm not actively studying. I'm surrounded by the culture and each day feels like the first raindrops of a rainy day trickling down my head and slowly soaking through my clothes. With enough time and exposure babies learn their home language. In the same way I'm slowly making improvements in my Japanese with every experience.
This applies to anything we're working toward. Progress is like drops of flowing water transforming the earth it interacts with upon falling. It might be slow at first and we might feel like we're stuck at a dead-end, but with enough time we begin to notice a transformation and we become something different as a result.
Being in Japan has changed me in a lot of ways and the influence the culture has had on me has also helped me to understand the thinking behind the language. Although studying through books can help make sense of certain expressions, actually living here and learning about how the Japanese think is an invaluable experience that has furthered my understanding by so much. As I continue to dive deeper I'll keep changing and the result will be someone with better mastery of the language and these skills will open up a lot of doors for me in the future. What I'll end up becoming is anyone's guess.
This experience has reminded me that no matter how high the hurdle, with enough practice I'll be able to take that test again with a fuller understanding of the materials. Eventually I know that I'll even be able to read the more difficult kanji and gain a near native-level understanding of the language. I've made definitive progress since last year and I know I have a lot more to learn, so I'm looking forward to taking on the next challenge step by step until there's nothing that can stop me. Nothing is impossible for us to achieve if we're willing to continue working toward it.
Peace
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| With enough time and commitment those little drops of water (practice) add up and eventually become a flowing river (mastery). |
How are you challenging yourself to improve? What are you working on?
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