I’ve just watched a video titled “Learning Languages Ruined My Life”, made by a guy who has studied several languages to a high level of proficiency, and I just couldn’t understand it. The video itself doesn’t quite fit with the title, since the main idea is that learning languages is a painful endeavor, because it makes you doubt your beliefs and identity, but that it is completely worth it because you get to see the world as it is and get to understand people from other cultures. The part I fail to understand is when he claims that learning languages is painful. I say “understand”, but thinking again about it, maybe a more appropriate word would be “relate”. I find it difficult to imagine how anyone can actually feel that learning is painful. This is, of course, completely subjective. I’m not saying that it is impossible; rather, that I can’t imagine myself feeling that way. It may be dependent on experience, maybe I’m just too young to get it, I haven’t lived enough; or maybe it is something only certain people with certain personalities experience. Maybe this is about empathy and understanding people's problems. I may lack that. It might be due to a completely different reason, of which I'm totally unaware.

Whatever the reason may be, I feel the complete opposite of what the video says. The more I’ve learned, the happier I’ve become. I’ve never felt tormented by knowledge. If anything, sometimes I feel that certain thoughts and ideas make me a little bit depressed, but it doesn’t last long, so that’s probably different. It could also be that the knowledge I've ecountered so far hasn't been of a suffering inducing type: that all I've learned and experienced in life has been harmless things.

For example, and this might prove what I’ve just said about what I know being harmless, last year I read the beginning of Descartes’ Discourse on the Method and when he proposes that mental experiment of doubting of everything and not give anything for granted, and also talks about that hypothetical evil genius that could, as far as we are able to know, manipulate our stimuli and make us see things that aren’t real; and when that led me to think that all that I value, my family and the things I care about, could just be fake and unreal, even though this is a very abstract notion and in practical terms a pointless preoccupation, it made me feel really sad and lonely. But that just lasted one afternoon: the next day, though still a little bit affected by the whole thing, I was already fine. And things like that sometimes happen to me, but I kind of feel better, more tranquil, every time that happens. It makes me think that the more I know the more prepared I am to deal with life's problems, at least as an intellectual simulacrum that leads me to convince myself that there are just things that can’t be helped and that there’s basically nothing we can know for sure about anything.

Well, that’s my bit of writing for today. I know it's really messy and I’m afraid I’ve just said a lot of stupid stuff, but I watched that video and it got me motivated to write, so I wrote, and I guess that’s what matters for now. In any case, thanks for reading, and also, if you feel up to it, I would also like to know your opinion. What do you think, is learning painful?