I’m studying Thai now, but taking a moment out to blog because I was learning the word ตั้งแต่, which means “from” (time). So I made the sentence:
ฉันเริ่มเรียนภาษาไทยตั้งแต่เดือนเมษายนปี ๒๐๒๐
(I started learning Thai in April 2020)
And it got me thinking. It’s been almost two years since I started learning Thai. I’d be honest and say that part of me doesn’t like to say that I started almost two years ago, because there was a long period in between where I didn’t touch Thai at all, and honestly, it’s only at the start of the year (I think) that I started to be a lot more serious about it. *pauses*
Then I ask myself, why should I be so insistent on giving this whole spiel, and not being able to simply say I started learning “two years ago”? I think it’s because part of me thinks that I could have been faster if I had spent more time on it, and that it feels like I’m not making much progress despite it being two years. And I start to compare it against past me who did a lot more within two years for Korean and Japanese.
But nah. That’s just me being competitive with myself and for a moment, I forgot that I just want to enjoying studying the language and not quite care about how fast / slow I am. I should care more about how much I enjoy the process.
It’s human nature to be competitive, whether it’s with ourselves or with others. It’s great to hold ourselves to high standards and expectations, but it’s just really sad if we do that for everything in our lives. Discipline is great, but society has placed too much importance on it. We’re just too caught up in the idea that we need to be productive. For what? Sure, there will be areas where it’s great to be productive, but there must always be balance in life. And I hope that learning Thai is the activity where I can just relax and be myself.
So, from now on, I’ll just say that I started learning Thai in April 2020! 🙂
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