Pratique du Shadowing: What 30 Years in the "Real World" Taught Me About Happiness - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec la vidéo

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Growing old is supposed to make you more wise, more worldly-wise, perhaps, more streetwise.
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But the cost of that is the wisdom of a child who knows everything.
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Children have a wisdom of innocence that we slowly grow out of; we forget.
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I want to grow young again.
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I want to stay as young as I can be.
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At least, if not physically, at least mentally, emotionally, psychologically.
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My little granddaughter Leah, she makes me feel young.
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She just keeps me with a smile on my face.
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Playing is a form of wisdom and it’s one that we tend to forget.
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I’ve often felt awkward about the phrase ‘the real world’.
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People say, ‘Oh, join the real world.’ ‘You’re not in the real world.’ By which they usually mean something like labouring and struggling through a job and commuting...
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all of these things - that’s the ‘real world’.
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But it’s not.
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Leah and little kids like her, they are the real world.
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The life she’s living, the joy she takes in everything that’s going on around her.
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And that transmits itself to me.
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That’s what I love, that’s what I love.
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To get swept up in other people’s dreams, to feel that I had to fulfil other people’s goals rather than my own, that was easy for me to do because it was what was expected.
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Everything we go through as we grow older as children is aimed towards success in life.
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It’s aimed towards making money and doing the things that everybody else expects of you.
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Societal pressure, even peer pressure, push you towards those kinds of things, pushed me towards those kinds of things.
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And I spent thirty-odd years as a member of what you might call the establishment.
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But all the time I was doing this I felt the urge to be a poet.
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I was a poet, but I didn’t dare tell anybody.
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I couldn’t, because you just didn’t.
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‘C’mon, get back to the real world.’ ‘That’s not the real world.’ ‘That’s fanciful, that’s dream world.’ It was only when I retired from teaching eventually that I suddenly realised this is what I’ve been wanting to do all along.
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This is what fulfils me.
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I did write something about that.
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Let’s see if I can find it and read it to you.
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Making It. There comes a day, we think, when everything falls into place, when troubles die, the sun shines constantly, debts fade and life makes sense.
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And does it matter then that we are not what everyone expects of us?
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And do we learn to please ourselves at last, and find ambitions lie in living here and now?
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At thirty, forty, fifty and beyond we dream of making it, achieving, of a day when we’ll sit back in wisdom and congratulate ourselves on our success.
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We’ll have the car, the mortgage paid, the kids established in their own careers.
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The problem is that we must waste our days discovering the truth instead of just accepting from the start we have it all.
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The opening of eyes upon the world is so much fantasy and we believe the dream that dreaming is a myth: we can’t (or can we, if we really try?) respect the intuition of the child and grow from old to young, from death to birth again.
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That’s Making It.
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My father and I had an awkward relationship.
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And it was based on his looking for what fulfilled him.
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And I remember one weekend I had gone to visit him.
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And we’d sit down comfortably and he’d say, ‘Hey, let’s have a nectar.’ But when he had a few drinks inside him, suddenly he became more focused on his disappointment in me for not having fulfilled my potential as the eldest.
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And he got a little bit upset with me.
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In fact he got more than upset with me, he’d start telling me things that I’d done wrong.
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And I just got to the point where I said, ‘I’ve got to go, I can’t take this.’ And I left the room and went upstairs to the bedroom.
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And I was seething, I was seething.
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But when I got up there, I realised I can’t sleep, I can’t sleep like this.
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So I went back down the stairs into the room and he was still sitting in his chair where I’d left him five or ten minutes before.
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He still had his little glass there.
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And he looked sad.
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And I walked into the room and said, ‘Dad, I can’t sleep.’ ‘I can’t go to bed with you hating me like this.’ And he just looked up slowly and he said, ‘I don’t hate you.’ ‘I’ve never hated you.’ ‘You’re my son, how could I hate you?’ And then he levered himself slowly out of the chair, came towards me, and we just hugged, hugged.
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I was just choked; there were tears running down my face.
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I don’t know how he felt, but I suspect he felt similarly.
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And then I said, ‘OK, good night then.’ And he sat down again and I went up to bed and I slept well.
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That was wonderful, that was a point where we met one another for the first time in years.
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I’m so happy now when I think of my family, my father particularly; at the end, he was my friend.
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We were friends.
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And for a long, long time it was hard to see that.
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But that love, despite everything else, remained.
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If you disagree with somebody, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be friends.
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And I think loving somebody with whom you disagree is normal.
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I’d almost argue that it’s necessary.
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Real friendship comes from understanding one another.
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It comes from realising that there are things we disagree on, there are things we might disagree on profoundly, but we still love one another.
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And that will never change.
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The arguments we have, the disagreements we have, they will come and go but the love remains.
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Are we a mosaic of people who have loved us?
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Yes. And they include in their own mosaic something that we’ve offered them.
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It doesn’t matter if somebody dies, because what they leave behind, their effect upon you, is profound; it’s profound.
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The people I’ve lost to death over the years I am what I am now, for good or for ill, largely because of them.
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In many ways Dave was who I am.
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He’s my younger brother.
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But when we were growing up he was the one who would question the things we were told we had to be and had to do.
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And I followed in his footsteps.
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He was always available to me.
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He was always someone who would be there.
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And that changed me.
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In some of the most difficult times of my life he was actually physically there, standing at my side.
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When we knew that Dave was dying, the opportunity came for me to travel there and to spend time with him.
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And it was a sad time because we knew why I was there.
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But it was a wonderful time because I was able to say things to Dave that I’d never said before.
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We both said, for example, that we loved one another.
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I’d never told him that before.
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Of course he knew it, I knew it.
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But the saying of it, that was something that was very important.
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When we just held one another and said how much we regarded the other, how much we loved the other, that was so important, so important.
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And he wasn’t just my brother, he was my friend, friend.
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Very special.
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Brother David.
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He was, and is, a leader, a head, a heart, a father’s son but ever himself: teacher, learner, a man of a better world than this.
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Here, now, in the present tense, one to walk at another’s side, to be there, to stand, to know that questions are all we are, and this is exactly as it should be.
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A brother, a real one.
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Say it loud.
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David, Dave, now we provision you.
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And you ain’t heavy – you’re our brother.
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Friends are not necessarily humans.
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I have friends who are mountains.
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I have friends who are trees.
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I have friends who are streams of water.
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I go out and I talk to nature.
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Nature talks back to me, with a voice that is instinctual, that you simply hear inside you.
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The trees are wondrous in their colours at the moment.
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But those wondrous colours signify death, the death of that particular life cycle.
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They fall down in beauty to the earth and give back to the earth what they’ve taken out.
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This is the life my brother and I have lived, him showing the way as ever, as now.
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Blessing is empathy, being aware that forest, that earth and air – these are us.
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Can they know it? Is their awareness ours?
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Isn’t this how each knows the other as kin?
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A first leaf of autumn falls brown and dry to the grass, shaped as David, while above, yellow and deepening green, his tree stirs in the breeze, smiles a quickening name.
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Springtime.
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It’s autumn and the leaves are falling.
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But they have to do that in order for us to experience springtime.
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They have to.
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The cycle will continue; it always continues.
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And that’s the wonder of life.
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If you’re going to die with any sense of fulfilment at all, you have to feel the fulfilment of knowing that what you’re doing is right.
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It’s just the way things are.
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And you’re going back to what gave you life in the first place.
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I think it’s necessary to come to terms with an accommodation with the earth, with the natural world that we’re part of.
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If I can find that I will go gentle into that good night.
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And I’ll be happy to do it.
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To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

Context & Background

The speaker reflects on the lessons learned from three decades of life experience, emphasizing the importance of maintaining a childlike wisdom and joy. He highlights how societal expectations can overshadow personal dreams, focusing particularly on his own journey to self-fulfillment. Interactions with his granddaughter, Leah, remind him of the purity and wisdom found in youth, which contrasts sharply with the pressures of adult life. The dialogue prompts a reevaluation of what constitutes the "real world," arguing that true fulfillment often lies outside conventional definitions of success.

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

  • "Join the real world." - A common phrase used to suggest someone should conform to societal norms.
  • "Get back to the real world." - Implies abandoning dreams or fanciful thoughts for practical realities.
  • "I want to grow young again." - An expression of longing for the simplicity and joyfulness of childhood.
  • "Happiness lies in living here and now." - A reminder to focus on the present rather than just future achievements.
  • "How could I hate you?" - A profound statement reflecting familial love that transcends misunderstandings.

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

To effectively use this video for enhancing your English speaking skills, follow this step-by-step approach:

  1. Watch the video once: Familiarize yourself with the speaker's tone, pace, and emotional expressions.
  2. Break it down: Choose short segments of 1-2 sentences. This makes it easier to focus on specific phrases that catch your attention.
  3. Listen and repeat: Utilize the shadowspeak technique by pausing after each segment and repeating what you hear. This enhances English pronunciation and fluency.
  4. Pay attention to intonation: Notice how the speaker emphasizes certain words or emotions. Try to mimic this to enrich your own speaking style.
  5. Practice regularly: Incorporate this video into your IELTS speaking practice regimen. Consistent repetition not only build skills but boosts confidence.

This structured approach will help you improve English pronunciation while also absorbing valuable life lessons from the dialogue. Remember to engage with the content actively and reflect on the themes as you practice. This duality enhances linguistic and emotional understanding, enriching your journey to learn English with YouTube.

Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?

Le Shadowing est une technique d'apprentissage des langues fondée sur la science, développée à l'origine pour la formation des interprètes professionnels. Le principe est simple mais puissant : vous écoutez de l'anglais natif et le répétez immédiatement à voix haute — comme une ombre suivant le locuteur avec un décalage de 1 à 2 secondes. Les recherches montrent une amélioration significative de la précision de la prononciation, de l'intonation, du rythme, des liaisons, de la compréhension orale et de la fluidité.