LISINSKI: The Failures

The very first word I said after landing at Charles de Gaulle was a swear word, in English, muttered under my breath.

I was testing my French abilities as a sort of basic benchmark. I wanted to get a sense of just how poor my language skills were now, right at the exact start of my semester in Paris, so that I could later judge how far I had (or had not) come.

It went something like this: “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Charles de Gaulle airport. Jd rososhenryskag shsirnalapoejd passport dnsoepahamrnrocprjrm today aslkajsfaksfasffsgege sun aetaksetklsajtastaset thank you.”

That string of incoherent mumbling was not what prompted me into a dirty word; no, I was somewhere between accepting and pleased that I could at least discern “bienvenue.” What did it was during the English announcement, when the speaker very pleasantly informed us that the local temperature was 15 degrees Celsius.

What?! 

What does that mean?! This is BS! They didn’t teach us that in school (they did — sorry, Mr. Feddern and Mrs. Beuhler).

I felt that familiar sharp blast of anxiety as I began to tap my foot frenetically. I can’t even tell what temperature it is! What is wrong with me? I never should have come.

About an hour later, my first interactions with my host mom were as awkward as I had expected them to be. I understood close to none of what she said, and I communicated mostly through sound effects and hand gestures. It turns out that a shrug and the deflated sigh “eeeeuuuuuhhhhhh?” are universally understood to mean, “where the hell am I and what is going on?”

Sure, I soon warmed up to my settings; the genuinely breathtaking sight of the Eiffel Tower from my living room managed to cause that. But for me, it is important not to be blinded by these shimmering lights. Reflections on the early failures are somehow what stuck with me the most during this first week.

Being in a new culture is disorienting. Having to communicate daily in a foreign language, one that drops off my tongue and clatters to the floor with a horrible noise as if it was a pair of too-heavy dumbbells, is emotionally exhausting.

And at this juncture in my life, it is exactly what I need.

See, I’m not just here to take in the Old World sights or to indulge in the wonder that is a healthy diet of cheese, fresh bread and wine (though both of those play a daily part). The most pressing imperative for me is to do daily battle with the voices.

They are the voices that lurk in everything. I’ll foolishly assume I left them behind with my adolescent angst, perhaps since those two make such a good team, but they find a way to come back at inopportune times. They are the voices that take everyday missteps and turn them into The Failures.

In my one week here, failure has been as ubiquitous as the cheese, as the wine, as the lights on the Seine. And — so far — that has been quite okay.

For the first time in quite some time, I feel that I can actually focus on what I have done instead of what I haven’t done. I kept a conversation going through an entire 45-minute dinner with my host mother, even if I conjugated the past tense of savoir improperly. I purchased all the groceries I need for the week, even if I purchased 1.2 pounds of cômte cheese because I forgot the conversion from kilograms (though I suppose that’s a mathematical failure and not a linguistic one). I thanked a cashier, and she reciprocated my kind words, even if I wished her good night at 11 a.m.

I’m here to unlearn whatever unsatisfying perfectionism I have learned, and I’m finding that the classic trope is often true: learning does come from failure.

There’s a fine line between complacency and acceptance, though, and I’m sure future efforts will be centered on maintaining that line, but for now, it’s refreshing to aim for survival over idealized perfection.

And I think this exercise will have a lasting impact. Back home, I had fallen into the whirlpool of not engaging with a situation fully so that I would have a pre-engineered excuse to explain my lack of perfection. It’s easier to write yourself off before you start than to feel the intense shame that comes with falling short.

So hopefully, I can grow up and develop some emotional callouses. Hopefully, I can stop spiting the gifts afforded to me, because frankly, I am lucky that mere perspective is one of the biggest challenges I face. Hopefully, I can return home with something approaching vigor and a genuine willingness to do something, whatever that capital-T “Thing” is.