I don’t know if it’s because I have a milestone birthday coming up this year, or if I’ve just been in a mood, but I’ve had a lot of memento mori moments in the past few weeks. It hasn’t (usually) felt particularly dark, often just recognizing how much time I waste (*cough* scrolling *cough*), and one day it occurred to me that when the mori part finally comes I will likely regret how many things I wanted to learn but never got around to. All the books on my shelves that were important enough to buy, and to keep, and to move from place to place… but never important enough to read. That kind of thing. (Okay, there was some darkness, I admit.)
About the same time, we went to a symphony/choral performance of Verdi’s Requiem and the words were projected as a “superscript” on a screen above the stage, in both English and Latin. Being a word nerd, I couldn’t help but try to understand the translation as the performance went along. How often could I guess at what the Latin was saying without looking at the English? I spent the whole time puzzling, like: “Dies irae”–oh, irae like irate, so something about anger. The. Entire. Performance. I was both wound up and worn out by the end, not only from the magnificent music but from mentally being switched ON by the language.
When we got home I texted a friend who is a newly retired high school Latin teacher and asked him how I should get started learning Latin.
Why?
I don’t need to do well on the SAT. I can’t travel to a place where they speak it (IMO this is a “pro”–I don’t have to feel bad that I don’t get to travel to a place where they speak it!). My “why” is basically: because I want to, darnit. Then, within days of my ordering the recommended textbook and workbook, a timely sentiment popped up multiple times on my social media feed. One version of it said, in effect, Life is short–whatever random thing you wanna learn about, go for it. Interested in a distant culture, an extinct species, a quirk of science, a dead language? Just learn it.
There’s a lot I want to learn. I’ll never have time to make it through all my books, much less the stuff I haven’t bought books about (yet). If I think about that too much, I get completely overwhelmed and will never start at all. Then I know the mori will someday find me, eyes glazed over, with a heating pad around my neck and a carpal-tunnel brace on my wrist, hunched over my phone screen. (Ugh–talk about dark.) But I believe in the Holy Spirit, and I also believe in (holy) serendipity and in (maybe also holy) coincidence and I even believe following our holy-or-not inner urgings, because we never know what will enrich our lives or transform us or lead us somewhere important.
I’ve always believed this, but I have not always acted on it. I tend to want a practical answer to “Why?”–why learn a thing or do a thing or pursue a thing? What is it for?? My need for a “good” answer has kept me from spending time doing or learning or pursuing things more often than I want to admit. But all those prompts from the social media algorithms–which I doubt are holy at all but maybe can serve holy means–were encouragement that it is not just okay to spend time on something for seemingly “no good reason,” it is excellent. So now: I’m learning Latin. Linguam Latinam disco.
That’s disco like discovery, discuss, discipline. Like disciple.
a moving yarn: 