Introduction

If I was to give you one piece of advice, one sentence from this article that would be important for you to remember, it would be this: never hurt someone so badly that their entire life changes because of it, and that becomes the exact reason you are both remembered and forgotten. You never know where life will take people, both yourself and others. In this article, I'll tell you how one language changed the entire trajectory of my life.

Back to 2018-2019

These were the years when I was living in my hometown, Dangara City. I love to call it The City of Yellow Sun because the atmosphere always had this yellow color from the dust blowing in from the plains of Afghanistan. The days passed one after another, and at that time I was a gamer. I had a broken laptop that somehow still worked, and I would often visit a nearby store called Gigabyte (GB), where they sold video games for around 5 TJS, basically 0.5 US dollars. As a youngster, I was always trying different games and looking for something new.

One day I went there again just to browse through the collection. Behind one of the video game cases, I noticed a different disk. It was an English learning pack. I asked how much it cost, and they told me it was the same price as the games, somewhere between 5 and 10 TJS, around 0.5 to 1 US dollar.

The Moment of Change

I bought one or two video games and, out of curiosity, the English learning pack. That small purchase completely changed the trajectory of my life. It was probably March or April, but even after buying it, I kept playing video games for another month and a half before I finally opened the disk.

What pushed me to do it was an English class at school. The teacher called me to the front and asked me to speak about a topic in English. I couldn't say a single word. She looked at me and said, "Good at everything, bad at that language. Are you not ashamed?" The class laughed, but I didn't. I went home thinking about finally learning English. Later that day, while talking with my friends outside, I mentioned that I was going to start learning the language. One of them laughed and said, "You'd be better off selling something at the bazaar." That was it. That was the exact moment I was done with humiliation.

Face It

We said goodbye, and I went straight home. I still remember it was around 4 PM. I opened my laptop, copied everything from the disk, and finally saw the folder sitting there. Looking back, I don't think I have ever dedicated myself to anything the way I dedicated myself to that folder and that language. I told myself that I didn't have enough money, and neither did my family, to pay for a teacher or a course that cost around 150 dollars. The only thing I had was this disk that cost 0.5 dollars.

So I started calculating how many hours I needed to study every day if I wanted to master English in three months. The answer came out to around seven or eight hours a day. And believe me, throughout the entire summer, I managed to stick to that schedule.

A Better Future

Learning a new language didn't suddenly make opportunities fall from the sky. It's more like opening a door. There might not be anything behind it at first, but the goal is to keep that door open, collect every key you find along the way, and put it into your pocket. Eventually, those keys begin opening other doors.

I could finally watch movies in their original language. I started thinking in English, and subtle changes slowly appeared. But in every other area of life, I still had to keep pushing myself again and again.