Are you willing to be bad at something?

I feel like a ten-year-old again, struggling to remember yesterday’s lesson.

I am in Fukuoka to work on my Japanese for next year’s walk across Japan.

I am being bombarded with information. Everything seems to move too fast. I stumble over words I know. I recognise a character one day and forget it the next.

It is humbling.

Learning something new can feel less like growing and more like becoming less capable.

We want the new career without feeling junior again.
We want to live somewhere unfamiliar without feeling lost.
We want to create something without producing the embarrassing first version.
We want a larger life without looking small inside it.

But nobody enters an unfamiliar future already competent. For a while, our old abilities are not enough and our new ones do not yet exist.

There is no way around that period.

Only through it.

The Perspective Shift

Being bad at something new is not evidence that you do not belong there. It may be evidence that you have entered territory in which you can still grow.

Learning Japanese is forcing me to accept that discomfort.

It is not an obstacle to the experience.
It is the price of entry.

Walk your talk,
Franck

P.S.:

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