Eat till it hurts and stay fat

Nike t-shirt I was walking through a mall on Saturday morning when I saw a rather large man with an equally large woman standing in the middle of the walkway eating fast food. They had on matching t-shirts (the one in the picture), shorts and sports shoes. I almost took a photo, but that would be rude. So, I continued on my way, making a mental note for today's blog post.

No Pain, No Gain

I've always heard this phrase used for exercise or sport. If you don't work out hard enough (and hence experience pain), you won't gain muscle mass, agility, strength, ... and whatever else you should to improve your physical fitness. As slightly tubby friends slog it out in the gym, us so-called friends will "motivate" them by saying, "Hey, no pain, no gain. Keep at it." This cute line is supposed to make them stay on the road to a 6-pack or hourglass figure.

Well, as I looked at this couple, I thought to myself, "How ironic!" The combination of being overweight, eating fast food and wearing this shirt was too funny for me. If you don't eat junk food till your stomach hurts (No Pain), then you won't get to my size (No Gain). So, no matter how much I exercise (note: they were wearing running shoes), I still need to eat high fat food to maintain or gain weight. Ha!

Whichever way you interpret this slogan, the fact remains that if you don't experience pain in learning anything, you will not gain knowledge and experience. The same goes with learning a language. The more pain you experience in trying to get the pronunciation, spelling, grammar, etc right, the more you will gain. You will be well on your way to communicating with a people and learning about their culture.

Whether you like it or not, all learning involves some measure of pain. The more pain, the more you gain! And have some fun in the process. The results are well worth the effort.

Learn a new language today!

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