Yeah, I don’t know how to start this one. So story time, I guess.

I’ve been in Spain for about a month and a half now. My Spanish has advanced—I’m not fluent, but I can ask questions as well as answer them. I’m picking up on Spanish culture, through observation as I walk through the city, learning the country’s history in the classroom, and interacting with the Spanish students in La Universidad de Oviedo. 

All that being said, dose of reality, thy name is fútbol.

Feeling the need to interact with my host parents more, I sat down with my host dad and watched the England vs. Spain fútbol game a little while ago. As the game went on, I came to a realization: wow, I know no Spanish words relating to fútbol. I had sat down hoping to make conversation with my host dad, but the topic at hand was one I was out of my element in. I didn’t know the Spanish for positions, so I couldn’t ask who’s on offense? or how is the goalie doing this season? When England scored a point, my host dad pulled out his phone and started looking for his translator. “Yo sé,” I assured him. “En inglés, they scored.” I watched a few more minutes of the game, feeling a familiar sense of frustration returning. My frustration was broken by dinner, but I had been served a healthy dose of reality. From this incident and another, I got firsthand experience of a concept introduced in class: humble idiocy.

The second occurrence happened this past weekend, when I traveled to the Picos de Europas mountain range with a group. I gulped as my eyes followed the cable car cables up the mountain. Oh geez, heights. Not helping was my friend Adam hypothesizing about what would happen should the cable car malfunction. I exited the car, walked up the stairs, and then walked out to the viewing platform.

This might have been the first time I’ve really been in nature. Sure, I’ve been in forests and to the ocean and such, and the fact that I came up on a cable car and took my first couple of pictures from inside the cable car and then over the rail of a viewing platform sort of undermines this statement, but something felt different about this experience.

I felt…tiny.

And I loved it.

As we continued down the path, there was a branch-off that took you down into a field and a natural overlook. I made my way down into the field with a few other guys and walked a stretch. As I weaved through the stones in the field, I gaped at the mountains in the horizon that seemed to go on forever. 

I’m…insignificant. And I’m…strangely OK with that.

We live in a cynical world, one where jokes about wanting to die are the norm and everything is met with an eye roll and a sigh of resignation. I’ve been striving to be a more positive person, but even with that goal in mind, my resistance to cynical thinking hasn’t risen from that. To walk among these huge rocks, to see a mountain so tall that the clouds flowed under its peak, to make the trek up a not-so-steady pebble slope to try and get close to a pair of mountain goats, it made me feel…like a little kid. And that was…a surprisingly enjoyable thing.

Those few hours in the mountains got me thinking about something my friend Tanner had mentioned in class, “humble idiocy.” It’s an in-between between the tourist demand that other countries bend over backwards to accommodate them and the in-over-my-head despair. 

Humble idiocy is finding joy in your limits. Limits to your experience, to your skill. No entitlement and demand that a culture kowtow to you, no “woe is me” and feelings of hopelessness, just rolling with your confusion and persisting in spite of it.

I’ve got about 7 weeks left in Spain. Here’s hoping for more humble idiocy.

El Idiota Humilde,

Noah

P.S. I’ve mentioned my host family a few times now, and it only seems fair that I actually show them.

And now I’m actually done.