S6E43: Beware the jokes of your yesteryears

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Thursday and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway. And today, I have the quickest message for you.  

So, a very very long time ago, I came across a meme on a bad day. It said,

“If you’re having a bad day, just remember someone from your hometown is still trying to become a rapper.”

I forgot about it. Then, this year, I realised how deeply I’d internalised it.

Because a person with a big goal, in a humble place, who doesn’t know if they’re going to make it or not? With the odds seemingly stacked against them in every possible way? When other people are probably looking on and thinking “yup, that’s never going to happen”?

That’s how I feel right now. And I know that that’s how so many of you feel too.

Those feelings of:

But who am I to...?

But is it possible?

But is it possible for people like me?

Is it realistic?

Is it arrogant, is it delusional? 

Then we start to feel like that person in your hometown.

Chasing a big dream is embarrassing. Doing something other people believe is impossible for you, makes you vulnerable. Living a life that other people don’t understand isn’t always easy.

But you know, people from someone’s hometown do become rappers.

So today, I just want to ask you to reflect on whether there’s been anything similar in your social media past. Might be joke, might be a meme, might be an entire storyline in a comedy or sitcom that you’ve internalised as part of your Personal Mythology as a kind of premonition about how things might work out for you or how the world sees you. Something that you’ve accepted as a reality.

Because that’s the funny thing about memes,  they’re so short, so snappy, so relatable, that they are VERY quick to lodge in your brain and they seem so harmless that we might not even realise they’re there…. Until moments like this one. Because just like with any kind of witty aphorism, they’re still drenched in our beliefs about success, failure, and a life well lived.

It’s okay to have big goals. It’s okay that people don’t get it.

Have a wonderful day, and I will see you tomorrow.