Wednesday

Well, I made the conscious decision to not write anything yesterday, I was too out of it. So I wasn't just slipping, I actually had started a post but then stopped. But I don't think anybody actually reads this anyway so it doesn't matter.

Whatever.

Anyway, interesting fact, today is the anniversary of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's death. If you don't know who that is or why his death was significant, I strongly urge you to look it up. I'm not going to elaborate here because that's not what I do.

In other nes, I met a very interesting person today. This person, who is 17 years of age, middle class, living in the US and has all her life, has taken it upon herself to learn every major global language (including the constructed language Esperanto), without any practical reason beyond attaining a greater understand of the cultures from which they originate. And thus far, she has successfully become fluent in (besides English) Spanish, French, German, Russian, and Esperanto, and is showing no sign of slowing.

This utterly astounds me. Not only is just the fact that she is fluent in six different languages, but the fact that she is for the most part self-taught and with no actual practical goal in mind, no pressing reason to. She is obviously some sort of linguistic genius, but her drive to learn all these languages is really awe-inspiring. Even if such a desire for understanding does not manifest itself so extremely, we should all be prepared and willing to make personal sacrifices and go way beyond our comfort zone solely in order to be able to better relate to our surroundings. Our world defines us, just as we define our world. If we always expect the environment in which we find ourselves to conform to our preferences, we will be greatly disappointed. And while this is an extreme case, it truly brings to light the fact that as detached as she is from these other cultures and languages, her ability to understand them and communicate in them has deepened her understanding of her world, and knows better how to work it and work with it to satisfy her and everyone else's needs.

Wow. That's pretty damn cool. I have a very deep amount of respect for this person.

Finally, this site made me very happy. Check it out.

Peace out, y0!