Amazingly Enough

It’s amazing how much you can teach yourself from someone you’ve never met before.

I’ve posted a lot of blogs about self-teaching, I realize that, but that’s only because it’s true. Everytime I try to console myself, and in every moment of it, I believe in what I’m saying.

When my favourite tennis player drops from no. 3 to no. 4 this Monday, I was disappointed. I thought she was gonna be in no. 2, for sure, but the truth was beyond my expectations.

Fortunately enough, I read her interview session, and in it, she says, "That’s life. It was disappointing to lose, sure, but you just have to improve yourself." That’s not her exact words, but, I mean, that’s the whole point. And then I remember a line from a TV movie that says, "Well, you win some you lose some, right?"

As soon as I saw the points she’d gathered I said to myself, "Nah, it’s fine. She’s be no, 1, it’s just a matter of time. It’s no big deal."

That’s what I call learning from someone you’ve never met before. How you feel… well, a lot of things from what they’ve achieved. When they do good (enough), from your point of view, you’ll more likely to be happy for them, and hope that it would last forever. There’s not much learning from there. But it’s when they’re stumbling. You tell yourself that they’re gonna do better, and if you can (I can, I post a guestbook entry to cheer her up everytime I go online), you cheer them up, encourage them that they’re still the best for you… without even realizing it, you encourage yourself. That’s a true lesson. That’s a lesson of life.

Anxiety and Disappointment

It’s amazing how anxiety and disappointment can crush you in just a split second. If you haven’t had that kind of feeling, then you should try it. Coz, really, you haven’t lived.

If you’re wathcing, say, a soccer game, and one of your favourite team (mine happens to be MU) almost scored a goal, it’s as if you’re right there, being one of the striker. When they kick the ball you feel anxious. Is it gonna go in, or out? When they don’t go in, you feel disappointed. But if the opponent has the ball, you feel anxious when they kick the ball toward the goal, and disappointed when it gets in.

I happen to follow a certain event, with my school’s name on my shoulder. It’s not the best school in town, I tell you, but to me it’s just peachy. I learn a lot of things from my new school.

I was able to get through to the 2nd step on the selection, and to tell you the truth, I was quite happy about it. For me it’s a sign that I could do just about anything I want to do. I say things like ‘oh, I wanna quit’ and ‘this is just a waste of time’ and ‘I wish I hadn’t got in’, and sometimes that express how I really feel. I do feel that it’s just a waste of time sometimes, specially when I have to leave class when all my friends are having a test.

My parents didn’t let me to go abroad to finish my high school. I passed the test with 590 TOEFL score, and I was very exited to get the program and to actually study abroad. But when the manager told me that the scholarship program was closed, I was disappointed. I knew right away that my dad wouldn’t let me go. Sometimes just thinking about it makes me very sad.

Anyway, back to the competition. I just saw the result and I didn’t pass through. I made 5 friends there and I’m the only one among that group who failed to go to the 3^rd step. When I opened the file my heartbeat was going crazy. And then when I found out that my name wasn’t on the list, it was broken. Just like that. I admit, my speech was messy. I practiced, and it took me 4 minutes and 46 seconds. When it was my turn, somehow it had gone from 4 minutes to just 2 minutes. It was messy.

The interview part I did quite well, or so I thought. I answered every question, with adequate explanation, and the interviewer actually agreed with me in some parts.

Anxiety and disappointment are the two feelings most humans try to avoid, next to sadness. That’s just what I thought. But it is amazing to me how those two can teach me lessons. Take the competition. Sure, I lost, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not good. It’s just that maybe it’s not my type of English. I’m not for debating and speech and such. If you need guys like that and go to me you’ve obviously gone to the wrong person. I’m more of the free type, so to speak. I listen to the radio news, I watch tennis and soccer game on TV and actually making comments about what they do (in English), I listen to my friends, I’m a conversation kind of person.

I can say that I’m good in English. In fact, I think that I’m quite great in English. But, for these kinds of things, I’m just not good enough.  See? I learn something from the two feelings most humans try to avoid.