Additional Lessons from Duolingo

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I wake up every morning and do four things: pray, drink tea (FYI the Starbucks London Fog tea latte tastes like the devil– stick to Chai or Matcha), workout, and I do my little Russian lessons. I have an unbroken streak and have busted through every league. Now, I am at the top and there is nowhere else to go. I am also halfway through the units. I have used just about every language learning software and program, believe me. My favorite is still Pimsleur. (I wanted to be the female Dr. Pimsleur before the age of 20– my youthful nerd dreams. Did all those languages in his brain lead to his heart attack that led to his death at 48? We will never know…). I digress. Duolingo has been a positive experience. Here is why:

  1. Weird sentences: They teach you the most useless sentences that stay in your brain. I learned how to say, “Where is my fly?” Just take a look at the screenshots I have included here. Whose brother doesn’t speak at all? Are Russian younger brothers mimes? Why is there blood on the ticket? Is there blood on all Russian tickets…? Are these subtle cultural lessons? Do people have pet flies? The intrigue keeps us going;
  2. If you are patient, you can learn so much for free: One of the main reasons why Duolingo is fun is because it is free. I can literally let little ads play. I go grab my tea and by the time I come back, I am ready to roll. Their ads are weird little phone games I would never purchase. You can pay to skip the ads and then have unlimited hearts. The way Duolingo works is you have 5 hearts each day, and you lose hearts with each mistake. Once you run out of hearts, you can’t proceed. So, people buy the premium version so they can keep going. To me, the losing the heart for each mistake is great. It teaches you a lesson. I figure if you have something to lose, you are more invested;
  3. Go big or go home: I wanted to learn how to speak Russian. With Duolingo, I had no choice but to get the Russian keyboard and learn script. There is no way around it. It wasn’t what I had in mind, but I am grateful. It has taught me how to read and write Russian. Which is wild. Maybe this will be my fourth language I am fluent in;
  4. You’ll swim: This program just throws you into things. It has zero explanation for anything, and you have to literally figure out everything. You have to sit with the sentences and really think about what was the difference or what a plural word triggers. I had a headache for like two weeks when I first started this program because of this extra use of the brain. Now, it’s a bit better. I am still asking questions and trying to figure nuances out. Regardless, I am swimming; and
  5. Competition is healthy: The whole escalating the levels and leagues was serious for me. Now, I have reached the last one, and there is nowhere to go. I think they should keep the leagues going. Seeing where everyone stood on the leaderboard really motivated me to keep my consistency and volume of lessons going.

Proportions

“I died after living more of my life with you than I lived with just myself.” Jenny Slate, Little Weirds

We all live with this tiny little clock that ticks beside us. It ticks with every heartbeat. It measures the life we spend on our own and the life we spend in the company of others.

I think deep down inside, we all want to live most of our lives in the company of someone rather than alone. It may be this little clock and the ever fluctuating percentage of life spent alone that pushes us to rush into unhealthy relationships, like why my neighbor screams hysterically and sobs every morning in her same abusive mire, or why our timelines oppose logic. We feel an urgency with each passing tick, in our youth. Ideas, machinations and strategies to lessen our alone percentage reign. The finish time that determines the proportions, our time of death, is unknown to us all.

Why is it that we feel there is something wrong with a larger portion of our lives spent on our own? We can argue that man and woman were not created to be alone, but even if that is the case, it doesn’t help change our reality. Sometimes, we are alone, and that’s all there is to it.

As time passes, each person living on his/her own gets dangerously closer to having lived more of life with just him/herself. And as I look around, I am not so sure that’s a bad thing. We confuse someone’s company for being loved. One would hope that one keeps company with someone who cherishes them in return, but I think Dolly Alderton makes a good point in favor of love being something that needs no company:

“I stretched out diagonally in my bed, across the cool sheet. I was completely alone, but I never felt safer. It wasn’t the bricks around me that I’d somehow managed to rent or the roof over my head that I was most grateful for. It was the home I now carried on my back like a snail. The sense that I was finally in responsible and loving hands. Love was there in an empty bed.” Everything I Know About Love

I don’t think this game of mathematics is about people filling up a portion of our lives and us stacking up that percentage of time against everything else. I truly think it’s about the weight of those proportions. Time alone and time with company can weigh the same if both are filled with love. The absence of external company never means the absence of love, unless you have forgotten yourself.

Why We Can’t Sleep

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I’ve enjoyed Tish Harrison Warren’s Prayer in the Night. One of the chapters I most liked was about praying for those who rest. Ironically, as I write this, I should be sleeping.

She writes that sleep is “so vulnerable.” “We sometimes have a hard time embracing it. We stay up late, staring at screens, working or vegging out, lightbulbs buzzing softly into the night. We resist our bodily limits in every way we can.” (*Nervous laughter* as I am writing this late at night).

When we sleep, “We dream. We fight illness. We form, sort, and strengthen memories from our days. Scientists tell us that learning happens in our sleep, and is even dependent on our sleep.”

Harrison points out that, “Our bodies are set up so that we have to loosen our grip on self-sufficiency and power if we are to thrive.” She quotes James Bryan Smith on the point that, “You cannot make yourself sleep. You cannot force yourself to sleep. Sleep is an act of surrender. It is a declaration of trust, admitting that we are not God (who never sleeps), and that that is good news. We cannot make ourselves sleep, but we can create the conditions necessary for sleep.” It’s a “posture of surrender.”

Why is it so hard for us to surrender? Hey, I live in NYC, which prides itself on never sleeping. Are we truly this dysfunctional? When did this control and exhaustion become a badge of honor. And if sleep requires trust and surrender, what does our restlessness really mean?

Shaadi

Image via Bollywoodgaram.com

By: Gabriela Yareliz

“An Indian marriage is basically a promise, not a contract, and the couple takes a vow that they’re going to be married for seven lifetimes. […] the couple walks around a fire seven times, promising to find each other in every lifetime.” Priyanka Chopra, Unfinished

I found this to be so moving. Beautiful.

Image via Indian Express

After the Wall Fell

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Today, I was reading the story of Rahab. It’s funny because we are all familiar with the story. Israel sends spies to Jericho to strategize how they can take the city and conquer it.

Rahab’s home is in the very wall of Jericho. (Joshua 2:15) She is a prostitute who hides the Israelite spies (and she helps them get away safely to plan their takeover). She expresses to the spies that she knows their God is powerful and will give them victory over Jericho. (2:10-11)

She strikes a deal with the spies. The spies tell her to gather her family in her home and to tie a scarlet cord in her window, and they will spare her life to repay her for her kindness and loyalty to them. (2:18)

This is the classic story. We know that Israel in Joshua chapter 6, marches around the city (seven times) and shouts upon the Lord’s instruction. The Lord gives them the city. (6:16)

What I find interesting is that I always thought Rahab and her family were evacuated before the wall falls and the chaos of taking the city ensues. But Scripture does not tell us that. In fact, the wall falls flat. FLAT. (6:20)

Why does this matter? Well, remember that Scripture tells us Rahab’s home was built into the wall. It’s not until Joshua 6:22 that someone says “Go to the prostitute’s house and bring out from there the woman and all who belong to her…”

Why did this catch my eye? If Rahab’s house was built into the wall, and the wall fell flat before she was evacuated and saved, that means that before the spies could keep their part of the deal and bring her and her family to safety, God was very much involved and spared this prostitute and her family. The fact that when the wall came down she was not crushed under rubble and dead with her family was a miracle. The wall fell but Rahab and her home were spared. God’s hand was upon her. A gentile prostitute had God’s hand shielding her and all who belonged to her, who gathered by faith in that home.

God deals with us with so much mercy and saves us first. God saved Rahab for her kindness with the Israelite spies before the spies could return the favor. They definitely played a role in evacuating them as they started to burn and pillage the city, but the fact that there was someone to evacuate was God’s doing.

Here we have a gentile prostitute found in the lineage of Jesus. (Matthew 1:5) Rahab believed in the one true God, and God honored her faith. If you believe He is true, His hand is on you.

Raising a Flag

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I was organizing my clothes and handbags, you know, for optimal use and accessibility. I am a nerd like that. Decided to store some sweaters I have had on rotation since 2020, to make room for some lesser worn items. New decade, new rituals.

As I was putting my electric heating patch thing (great for cramps) in my storage bench at the foot of my bed, I came across a little flag banner I had bought for one of my brothers for one Christmas. It says, “Be a badass.” I am ever the encouraging one, ha. I tend to buy my Christmas gifts early, and what I didn’t know when I got it was that my brother was going to take a trip and not return for a long time. He sort of just vanished, details left undiscussed and unavailable.

I remember that time really rocked me. There are times in life when one feels like one is standing on quicksand with no solid ground in sight. I never sent that gift. I had no address to send it to. (I think I just sent an Uber gift card. The irony is not lost on me). I forgot I had rolled up the little banner and stuffed it at the bottom of the bench. I know why I stuffed it there. When my hands found the crinkled plastic it is wrapped in, I swallowed hard. That dark time of uncertainty, worry and panic sort of flooded me for at least 3 seconds.

But then, I looked at it, and I smiled. I remember what I was thinking when I bought it. I believe everyone should strive to be a badass, but to be honest, not everyone is. It’s a difficult choice to make because it costs you something. I’ve been really working on the fact that the person I need to worry about right now and encourage is the person staring back at me in the mirror. I decided I am keeping the banner. I decided I earned it because I’ve clung to hope and gotten up every time this beautiful and damned life has knocked me down. (It would be inaccurate but cutesy to say it has tried to knock me down. No, it has. I have felt so shattered inside, face down on the ground). But that’s the thing about something after it falls. It has the opportunity to rise. That is what being a badass is.

Flags send messages. I used to think the boat flags were decorative, ha. (All the little colors). They aren’t. They communicate messages. So this flag, while I didn’t know it when I bought it– this one is mine.

Filling the Gap

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I read something that I loved (and struck a chord with me) in Prayer in the Night, by Tish Harrison Warren. It was this idea that sometimes, we carry such deep burdens. There are times in life when we are drained to the core and can barely look up.

Warren makes the distinction between suffering and affliction. Suffering is the fact that people go through trying moments. The church is good at dealing with suffering– bringing five casseroles, doing a couple visits, praying for someone at the hospital. Something the church is ill-equipped to deal with is affliction. Affliction is different because it is not momentary suffering, but instead, it’s lives that are steeped in grief for long periods of time. Sometimes, from beginning to end.

Affliction could be a parent dealing with a wayward child or a parent who has a disabled child who depends on them for the rest of their lives. It could be family members with an addiciton… there is so much that happens in people’s lives that is not just momentary suffering but adds up to a life filled with weight, trauma and affliction. Grief is ever-present.

And while the church, (and we are the church) is ill-equipped to deal with affliction, community is critical to our well-being. There are so many prayers in scripture that are for the church. They provide collective blessing. Warren mentions that when creeds in worship are recited, they don’t say “I believe in God the Father…” she writes, “because some weeks I do and some weeks, I can’t climb that high. Instead we confess, ‘We believe…'”

She continues and writes, “Belief isn’t a feeling inside of us, but a reality outside of us into which we enter, and when we find our faith faltering, sometimes all we can do is fall on the faith of the saints. We believe together. Thank God belief isn’t left to me and my ever-fluctuating faithfulness.”

There is so much power in community. I think about this continually as sometimes I feel so disappointed in community. Maybe the disappointment stems from the fact that I know it has so much power. We cannot alone, but together, we can help fill in the gaps for each other. And there are gaps. There will always be gaps, as long as we are human, flawed and vulnerable, as only humans can be.

Remember, when you feel you don’t have enough faith, it’s not just you– we believe. And if you see someone who can barely hold his/her head up, someone who is afflicted– pray for him/her, with him/her, believe for him/her. Hold that hand for as long as it takes. You fill in the gap. There is power in we.

Relatable from Seinfeld

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I watched 9 years of Seinfeld in like three weeks. The episodes are very short, so it wasn’t hard to do when I would play it while I cooked, cleaned and ran errands on the streets. So, I guess I wasn’t watching as much as I was listening, but still. At a glance, the show is vapid. I would have used the word banal, but there was an element of originality to it. It was stupidly original. The characters are deeply unlikeable (except for Kramer). They learn nothing, are self-absorbed and whiny in a very New York way. Jerry Seinfeld, however is intelligent. I have heard him speak. The writing on the show pays attention to detail and is intentional. I kept thinking that this show isn’t just about a slow-witted, stocky bald man (Costanza’s description of himself), a sponge-obsessed ex-girlfriend turned best friend (Elaine), an insane neighbor (Kramer) and a whiny comedian who in no way wants to be a pirate (Jerry).

I think the last episode really hit it home for me, when Seinfeld and his friends are on trial for their callous indifference to another man’s robbery.

“I do not know how or under what circumstances the four of you found each other, but your callous indifference and utter disregard for everything that is good and decent has rocked the very foundation upon which our society is built,” says Judge Vandelay at the reading of the verdict. That pretty much sums it up.

Despite the unlikeable characters and lack of depth, I will say that there were things on this show that were so deeply relatable to me. Here are the things I totally got from Seinfeld.

Image via TV Series Finale
  1. Jerry’s plain, pre-war apartment: Before Instagram distorted the world’s view on what a home should look like, apartments were typically like this. Mine is very much like this. The paint layers make the apartment smaller, lumpier and grayer. The door has 15 locks on it.
  2. Older singles: They are all in their late 30s and single. Kramer is probably older than the three friends. My New York church is teeming with older singles. It’s like a city norm. Most married couples are either older or arrived here married from the outside world. Elaine at one point of the show wants children, but then she doesn’t and reveals herself to be terrible with children. George and Jerry have a conversation about how they are not men and are old children. It’s a city syndrome.
  3. The episode on the parking spot: This is too real. One can circle looking for that spot for hours.
  4. The low-talker: I had a professor in law school who would mumble to herself. We asked tech to give her a mic because no one could understand her. The mic did not help.
  5. The attorney: Jackie Chiles is hilarious. He was litigious and always ready to pounce on an opportunity (only to be humilated by Kramer’s stupidity, every time). I once had a client show up drunk to his own trial. I get the humiliation.
  6. Elaine and Ellen Mischke’s disdain/friendship: They can’t stand each other in a passive aggressive way, but Elaine serves as maid of honor at her almost wedding. Sometimes, the only thing that binds you to a person is your history.
  7. How small absurdities become the big things in life: This is a reality of life here in New York. Especially if you interact a lot with people. There is so much absurdity. This is what you discuss at the dinner table at the end of the day. Enough absurdity makes a life.
  8. Seinfeld’s love for cereal: As someone who grew up on cereal, I was always paying attention to the boxes in Seinfeld’s kitchen. He always had a good variety. Honeycomb shows up multiple times. The show touches on this when his mom packs a suitcase of cereal when he has been arrested. She takes cereal to Jerry, and he eats it with very little milk (he complains about his milk rationing in the finale). Cereal is the ultimate American breakfast.
  9. George’s message machine: It got stuck in my head. I would have done this as a kid. The difference is George is a grown man…
  10. When Kramer wants to cancel his mail forever: I love when he goes to the post office to cancel his mail forever. (Love when Newman comes to address his request and tells Violet to take her 3-hr break). Now that so much is electronic, Kramer’s wish could actually come true. I love getting letters, but the mailing of bills, ads, etc. All this should go away forever. Kramer was onto something. He didn’t need mail. He saw the people he wanted to talk to in person and everything else was unnecessary.
Image via product placement blog