On the subject of skills.

Polskie tłumaczenie: Na temat umiejętności.

I've always been envious of people who started learning a difficult or time-consuming skill when they were children. Even more so, if their parents forced them to learn more than one. Then again, I am sometimes the object of such envy as well, with people noting my affinity for languages.

The truth is, it's not natural and all of this comes from study. We don't preserve memories of our childhood well, but we preserve skills: muscle memory or subconscious patterns. Some skills children are forced to learn by parents may sometimes be superfluous or useless in adult life, but that is rarely the case.

And then I thought to myself -- what did I learn as a child? English, the guitar. I also had my speech impediment fixed. Now, looking back at all of this, I don't remember learning any of it. My mother was very considerate and she did, indeed, force me to learn it, even though I was vehemently opposed to it as a small boy.

Now I'm an adult and I still learn skills. I learn Greek and I learn the piano. But I've sort of accepted that I will never be as good as I would have been, had I learnt from my childhood. I will never understand Greek natively, or at least as well as I do English. In fact, I don't remember not understanding English, I don't remember being unable to play the basic guitar chords, I don't even remember how I was speaking before the two-year logopedist therapy. But I have preserved the skills and I would have been much worse off if it hadn't been forcibly taught to me.

So, if I were to end this with a word of advice to parents -- make your children learn skills. They will thank you, trust me.

Godspeed.