Welcome to Bedtime stories for adults, Once… many years ago… there was a traveler who wanted to learn English. This traveler wanted to explore the world. He wanted to communicate with people who were different from him. As a child, he listened to stories about wonderful places in other lands. He heard about people who wore different clothes and ate different types of food. He dreamed of visiting those faraway places. But as an adult, he could only speak his local language.
Bedtime stories for adults - The traveler Learner.
Bedtime stories for adults
His language was beautiful. In many ways, it was magical. It reminded him of his grandparents and of eating long meals with his family, but the only people who could speak this language lived in the small village where the traveler had grown up. The traveler worked hard and, with time, saved enough money to buy some grammar books about the English language. He knew that English was spoken by many people. This language was spoken by unknown faces in those faraway places. This language could help him speak to those people with different cultures and different points of view. This language was the key to opening up the world.
So, the traveler opened those grammar books about English and tried to understand what he read. He studied. He studied as much as he could, but he often found his mind wandering. He would fall asleep with the books in his hands and begin to dream. Dream of those faraway places. He didn’t learn much from those books.
Bedtime stories for adults
One day, a young woman visited his village. Her eyes were a light copper brown that enchanted him. She spoke his language with a strange but enchanting accent from an unknown place. Her language was not perfect, but she could easily communicate with the villagers. After watching her for a long time, the traveler walked up to this visitor and asked, “Excuse me… where did you learn our language? I want to learn English so I can travel. I want to visit faraway places. I want to communicate with the world. Can you help me?”
She looked at him with a soft and understanding smile. “Let me give you some advice. You should walk east for three or four days until you find a deep lake. There is a village by this lake. Walk there and speak to the people you find there. Ask them about an old man with a white beard who sits on a large stone by the lake. They will know who I am speaking about.” She stepped closer to him, and moved her lips near to his right ear and whispered, “He will tell you the secret of learning English.” She stepped away from the traveler and winked at him with a catlike smile, before she moved away. Her perfume was in the air, and the traveler knew that he would follow her advice.
The next day he said goodbye to his friends and family, telling them he would be home in about a week. He left his village and headed east. He moved through the tall grass and felt the wind blowing against his face. He listened to the insects around him as he moved and tried to understand the birdsongs as he passed into an area he had never visited before. After a few days, he arrived at the lake the woman had mentioned. A small collection of houses was spread throughout the forest and the people there spoke a language that was slightly different from his. It was difficult to understand the people, but after some time listening to them and trying to communicate, the traveler eventually was told where he could find the old man with a white beard.
He hiked through the light forest to the opposite side of the lake and found the old man sitting there, with leather-like skin, leaning back on a rock. His eyes were closed.
“Excuse me, sir… I come from a village not far from here. I have heard of you. Can you tell me the secret of learning English?”
The old man slowly opened his eyes, like a turtle waking up from a long nap. The man said, “The secret of how to learn English? Strange you would ask an old man in the forest, but yes… I know of what you speak. To learn English, you must use it. You must speak it. You must read it. You must listen to it. You must learn to love this language so much, that you will spend every free moment thinking about it. You must find your motivation, traveler, or you will learn nothing. You will waste your time measuring yourself against what someone else created, or you will give your money to those who promise you a quick answer. Some will even suggest you listen to the language in your sleep, hoping it will fall into your dreams, promising you that you will wake up speaking fluently. You will do these things and may even believe them, not because you are lazy or ignorant. No... You will believe them because learning a language is hard. It is one of the most difficult things that a human could try to learn. It is a long road to learning a language, my friend, and there are no shortcuts that work for everyone. You must find your own way. But do not despair. Do not worry. Do not be overwhelmed by frustration. The language will come to you when you have found your motivation, or your motivation has found you.”
The traveler listened. The traveler thought silently. The traveler then answered, “But I don’t know where to start. I am not in love with the English language. I simply want to travel. Traveling is what my heart desires. Not English grammar.”
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The old man looked at the trees in the forest around them. He turned to look at the calm waves on the lake behind him, breathing calmly. He turned back to the traveler, and told him, “Then you should continue down this trail here in the forest. It will take you through the deep woods. Continue walking throughout the night, do not stop and do not sleep. By morning, you will come to a village with new smells and with people who look different from you or me. Explore this village. In this village, you can find a person or two who speaks English. Learn a few words from each of them.”
The old man took out a pencil and a brown piece of paper. He wrote on the paper slowly, scribbling a long message out word by word. His white beard and white eyebrows moved up and down as he smiled to himself. He held the paper out to the traveler. “While you are walking this evening, I ask you to repeat these words to yourself. Speak them in your mind, or speak them to the trees. Speak them as you travel. Now go, my friend, the world lies in front of you. You can listen to me or not… after all, I am just an old man sitting on a rock.”
With that, the old man closed his eyes. The traveler took the paper and looked at the trail. He could go home, but he was bored with home. He had little to lose. This new village through the deep woods was only a day away. He began to walk down the trail. The wind blew through the leaves and, after a few minutes, he looked at what the old man had written on the paper. He followed the old man’s instructions and read the message out loud.
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The secret to learning a language. The traveler laughed, but he read the message anyway. “To learn a language, one must use it. To learn to speak a language, one must speak it. To learn to understand a language, one must listen to it. To learn to live a language, one must live it. To learn to communicate, one must communicate. I must find my motivation, or I will learn nothing. Others will promise me fast answers. Others will give me false hopes. Others will profit from my worries. Others will tell me that I can learn a language while I sleep if only someone would speak to me all night. This is not true, but I may believe it to be so. I will not believe it because I am lazy or ignorant, but because I have not accepted that learning a language is hard. It is one of the most difficult things that a human can do. It is an endless journey along a long road, but it is a rewarding journey and a beautiful road, and it will open up the world to me. It will help lead me to what and who I am searching for. Do not despair. Do not worry. You are intelligent. You are smart. You have simply not had the opportunity to shine. You will learn the English language when you find your true motivation.”
The traveler continued walking… and he repeated the words. He sat down with his back against a rock and closed his eyes. He might need a small rest, but he was sure he would continue on. He had been thinking about the old man’s words for more than an hour. The traveler’s motivation for learning English was clear. Exploring. Traveling. He’d focus on that while he picked up pieces of language on the way. He would stop worrying about being perfect. In the future, his motivation might change. Perhaps it would be in getting a new job. Most likely, it would come from wanting to communicate with interesting people. For the moment, for him, it was traveling. He would no longer stress about prepositions and grammar books, but he would focus on the new places he wanted to visit. He’d learn English on the way, as he needed to. The fun would be in the journey, not the destination. He took a long breath and fell into a deep sleep, smiling. He would start exercising his English when he woke up. When he arrived at the village, he would search out people to speak with. While he slept, he would let his brain rest.