BGM: Sting - If I Ever Lose My Faith In You
It rained heavily today. During this morning's working time, I remembered why I had started learning English like this seriously and diligently after quitting alcohol at my 40. This year I will become 49, and when I was young I could have imagined this age as a symbol of a mature personality or a tranquil state of mind. But as I have written in these journals, even now I have to face the fact that my mind has always been moved by various tiny troublesome things this life keeps on affording to me.
When I was in my 30s, I read a column in a magazine, that taught me about a rockstar Sting's life history. Once he had been a teacher, but one day he tried to imagine how his life would become after 10 years. Then, he found that he would do the same pretty boring job for him even after those years... So, he decided to start a new carrer as a musician. That column told me like that (probably my memory isn't correct enough, but I accepted his story as this.) So, I tried to imagine my "10 years after" like him, and also found nothing in my future...
At 40, the age when I had just quit alcohol and tried to start a new life with a sober mind, I started learning English once again after a long blank since my college days. At the beginning, even though I had studied English literature at a college, I could write nothing smoothly/fluently. But bit by bit, my friends started praising my English as a good one, and now I also can find a certain pleasure in using English. Oh, that was also about "10 years" ago... As I wrote, everything is certainly changing as now.
What if I couldn't have met my friends? What if I didn't show my English to my job coach? Reading my English, that friend said to me "Your English is so cool." That comment has been still alive in me, so I can keep on learning English as a tiny mission of mine. Mission... when I was a heavy drinker, I had strictly believed (or tried to believe) that my life must have no meaning at all, therefore I must be a loser. Now, I can find that learning English is a certain mission of mine, to become a kind of "bridge" between this town and the world.
