Amy Lu's View

(Author’s note: I wrote this to read at a recent church service, so it’s a bit of repurposing of previous blog content…let’s think of it as renewing previous content).

Uh-oh. There it is in my inbox again: the email informing me that my subscription to the Babbel language learning app is going to automatically renew for another three months. 

I’m chagrined by this email and filled with low-level shame. Yes, once again another three months have gone by and I haven’t even opened the app, much less made any progress in learning Spanish. 

I could cancel the app. It would take a little time, but I could probably figure it out. But wouldn’t that be admitting defeat? I do want to be the type of person who learns another language, even if it’s just at a basic level. And I don’t want to give up the hope that Chad and I might travel to a Spanish speaking country someday…

I’m not up for this level of soul-searching, so I do nothing. I’m a Babbel subscriber for another three months. 

I have automatic renewals for so many things: magazine subscriptions, email newsletters, our gym, our public radio membership. We even have a subscription for coffee from a Seattle-based company. And let’s not forget all our streaming accounts. 

Most of these automatically renewing subscriptions are convenient and helpful–I want to keep giving to public radio, and we do actually use our gym membership and watch the Disney channel. But do I want to keep my access to AMC? That was supposed to be temporary, so I could watch the first season of Interview with The Vampire. But we just never got around to canceling it, and now the second season of Vampire is out…

We can see how renewals for services and products have an obvious monetary and sometimes emotional cost. They deplete our bank accounts and add to the clutter of our lives. But we also renew other, more subtle things. I didn’t consciously sign up for them, but every day I renew a plethora of anxieties, fears, annoyances, hurts, outrages and unhealthy habits. I renew the stack of clothes on my dresser, the bags of recyclables that need to be taken out, my hurt because someone close to me doesn’t respond to my attempts at communication. I renew my indignation over having a stranger tell me my singing at an open mic was a little off and replay the imaginary conversation I should have had with him. I read the news and renew my moral outrage at people who support Trump. I renew the itchiness of mosquito bites by scratching them. 

I seem to have a renewable source of mysterious energy for things that don’t serve me well. Can I transfer that energy, at least some of it, to sustaining and renewing what I actually want to continue doing and thinking and feeling? Maybe I can keep my Babbel subscription without the expectation I’ll become fluent, and just try to open it once a week and at least learn a few phrases of Spanish.

Maybe instead of perseverating about why someone won’t answer my messages, I can try and reach out and renew a relationship with someone who I think would welcome the connection. 

And I can pledge to only indulge in my moral outrage at having been disrespected at an open mic if I’m doing so in service of telling an entertaining anecdote.