Jim Kwik, in Limitless, makes a point that stayed with me: adults struggle to learn foreign languages not because of age, but because of mindset and ego. They are less willing to be wrong. And so they stop trying.

I recognize myself in that.

I studied French for 11 years in Romania, from 2nd grade through graduation. I was good at grammar, excellent at reading. But I couldn't really speak it. The accent made me self-conscious. When I visited France in my 30s, the words simply didn't come. I stayed silent.

Compare that to German, which I learned partly at home, partly in kindergarten, partly through years of school, and then cemented during a month-long scholarship in Germany where I only spoke German. I lived in it. The spoken language became natural.

Then I moved to the US. English arrived and German quietly left. Language, it turns out, needs to be used to survive.

So when a friend introduced me to a French teacher, Véronique, I said yes immediately.

The first lesson was mentally exhausting. She spoke only in French. Every time I reached for English, she answered back in French. It was disorienting and humbling and exactly what I needed. I came back for a second class. And a third.

By the third class, we started reading a book together, one recommended by a friend, currently only available in French. Le sherpa: Mémoires d'un diplomate aux avant-postes de l'Histoire, Philippe Etienne. I could have waited for the English or Romanian translation. Instead, we began.

Véronique's method is simple and brilliant: she reads a paragraph aloud first. We discuss anything I don't understand. Then I read the same paragraph, for comprehension, for pronunciation, for confidence.

Today was our fourth class. We finished Chapter 1.

What struck me is how much more than language this is. Véronique's French takes me somewhere else. There are cultural nuances, places, references layered into every page. It is a lesson in history and geography and human experience, all at once.

One line stopped me completely: "C'est à Budapest, la capitale hongroise, que je découvre le métier de diplomate, dont j'avais jusqu'alors une vague idée." It is in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, that I discover the diplomat's craft, of which I had until then only a vague idea.

Budapest. I was there once, coming back from Germany. The beauty of the city. The Danube. The whole memory came rushing back, summoned by a sentence in French.

This is what language does when it is alive. It connects you to things you had almost forgotten.

My reading is coming back faster than I expected. A few unknown words here and there, but I follow the meaning. The numbers still trip me up, 1978, 1993, 2023, my brain stalls trying to say them in French. But that will come too.

On a beautiful March afternoon, Pi Day, of all days, I walked away from that lesson with something I hadn't felt in a long time: pure, uncomplicated enthusiasm for learning.

Little by little, I will read this beautiful book. And little by little, my French will start sounding like something real.

To Véronique: thank you for speaking only French when I reached for the easy way out. That is the whole lesson.