Ya!

A couple weeks ago I was talking with a guy that owns and runs a store down the street. I’ve been in there quite a few times to talk with him, even having mate with him a couple of times. This particular day, he seemed sort of down (at least to the extent that I could tell), and he started telling me about his store, about the money he still owed the bank for it, about how he’d additionally had to borrow from his in-laws for it, and just complaining about how hard it all is. His store is still relatively new, and there are literally hundreds of these types of stores all over the neighborhoods here. They’re everywhere, all selling basically the same stuff at the same price. He is the only guy that works at his store, and he works every day from 8 am till 11 or 12 at night. Every single day. He also happens to have a wife and a 2 year old daughter.

A week or so later I went back in to see him again, and asked how things were going, just sort of casually asking if he’s getting more business, that sort of thing, and he takes a much different tone, almost apologizing for the complaining he’d done before. Telling me about how his wife helped him realize that he’s just got to be patient, that he can’t have everything now, that it all just takes time, I’m guessing alluding to the hope that he won’t always have to work so many hours, that the store will steadily gain a stream of loyal customers, and that things will gradually just get better. The word he used repeatedly to express the eagerness to have everything now is an interesting word in Spanish – ‘ya’.

The word ‘ya’ means basically both ‘now’ and ‘already’, which is kind of fascinating. So, if I want Emerson to do something right away, I’d use this word. “Vení acá ya!” or “Come over here right now!” When someone rings your doorbell or knocks on your door, you say “Ya voy” or “I’m already coming” (sort of). It’s used in like a million different expressions, a million times a day, one of the most common words you could say. The store owner was basically telling me how he wants everything “ya”.

One of the most frequent battles that I face, on a pretty regular basis, is this same type of tension. I want to be able to fluently speak Argentine Spanish already, not a year from now, not 2 years from now, but yesterday, preferably. But I want to be able to speak it not just so that I can have some personal sense of accomplishment in the whole thing (though that would definitely be a nice bonus!), but because there are SO many people all around me that really need me to be able to speak it. And at times it’s hard not to get caught up and at least somewhat discouraged by this, by the seemingly endless process of language learning. But just then, right when the discouragement sets in (like tonight), I (hopefully) prayerfully remember – wait, it’s not really me they need is it? It’s the God that was able to do this so that His own greatness would be proclaimed and understood by people eager to hear about it in their own language. And a little perspective really is quite comforting.