Missionary Spanish and the origins of life

I have not written a “from Barnes and Noble” post for awhile. I’ve gotten busy with other things and have not been frequenting the green and gold armchairs there quite as often.

Right now I am getting highly annoyed with a guy who is trying to impress a girl by reading Spanish poetry to her. If his horrible pronunciation weren’t enough to tip me off that he does not know what he is saying he just completely made up a very random translation to the poem… He is flat out lying to her…

I have two conflicting urges right now. I either need to stop him and correct his pronunciation and translation or I need to just get up and walk away. I don’t really want to be a jerk though and it looks like the girl is sort of buying it or at least she is not going to call him out on his lie…

The whole situation reminds me of what every return missionary who spoke a foreign language knows. Almost anything said in a foreign language sounds super impressive and downright magical to people who know nothing about the foreign language at all.

I still remember standing at the pulpit bearing my testimony in Spanish at my homecoming talk right after my mission knowing full well that my Spanish was total shit despite the hours and hours of practice and study that had gone into getting to the speaking level I was at. From the beaming smiles and enthralled faces of my various friends and family members you would have thought I had turned into a Spaniard while in Spain… 

Of course again, to the untrained ear my mispronunciations, gringa accent, and grammar mistakes were invisible. Also invisible to most listeners were those hours of study and work to get to that level. So the listeners’ lack of knowledge of Spanish and lack of knowledge of my hours of work to learn the language both combined to make it seem completely and totally miraculous that I should be speaking another language. It had to be the gift of tongues!

Of course those that had more knowledge of the language and could comprehend the hours spent learning the language looked less enthralled. Their knowledge of the process and being able to hear my mistakes did not make my speaking of the Spanish unimpressive, but it did mean that they were less likely to jump to the conclusion of labeling it as “miraculous” or “the gift of tongues”.

I’m sitting here right now reading The Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins and find that I’ve viewed life a bit like people view missionary Spanish. I am learning that the origins and evolution of life on this planet is not “miraculous” nor as perfectly orchestrated as I had previously believed. In fact the whole process of evolution is pretty messy. In some ways it’s totally full of hits and misses as survival was won and lost by various forms of life against conditions and environment on this dear little planet.

We are here, we are alive, we are lucid and that is so precious and so impressive. Your genes won the right to be alive. 

Knowing more about the process means that I am the person listening to that missionary bear testimony in broken Spanish and still love the result, but am much less inclined to jump to words like “design” and “miraculous” than before. Just because something is explainable and traceable does not mean it is less amazing. I am still enthralled and perhaps in many ways even more free to explore and examine than I was before since now that I know I "know" nothing I am more driven by questions than ever before... 

(I should really thank this guy for pretending to speak Spanish and making me think back to my missionary Spanish. It really sparked an interesting chain of thought today... )