Living in the present tense

It’s a funny thing about learning a language: When you’re starting out, the only tense you know is the present, so everything you say has to be in the moment. Kind of a good life lesson — especially for someone like me, who can spend a lot of time beating myself up for past failures and worrying about what’s next.

A fellow student recently gave me an excellent piece of advice that he received from his polyglot girlfriend: Instead of planning out what you want to say in English and then trying to translate it into Spanish, think how you can get your message across using the Spanish words you know. In my case, that means that everything has to happen in the now. I don’t (yet) know how to say, “Last night I had a really good pasta con hongos at a restaurant called Il Fiore,” so I say, “I like very much the restaurant Il Fiore. The pasta con hongos is very good.” The fact is, it doesn’t really matter when I ate there. And if someone really wants to know when I was there, they will ask me — and I can then reply, “Yesterday” or “Thursday.” Problem solved.

Friday evening, I had a long bus ride in the dark (see the Travelogue entry on Yelapa), and as I stared out into the darkness for hour after hour, I started to get bummed out that I am having this adventure now, instead of thirty or twenty or ten years ago. Why did I waste so much time digging myself into a cozy rut? Why did I value security and stability above freedom and adventure…? (As I said, I tend to beat myself up a lot.)

Not having the words to express thoughts like that in Spanish is a totally Zen experience: The past is gone. The future is unwritten. There’s only the present — in life, and in my vocabulary. I’m here now. I’m doing this now. It’s a liberating feeling, and one that’s completely inconsistent with self-flagellation.

I used to need to have at least one trip planned at all times so that I had something to look forward to. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy life on a day-to-day basis, because I did. I tried, and largely succeeded, in not letting the routine grind me down. I spent time with people I love. I tried to find fun things to do. I kept myself amused. But “amusement” is what we do for diversion. I don’t want to live a life that I need to be diverted from.