A Matter of Intention (Intermediate +)



It has been my longest, deepest wish to live a helpful, productive, fruitful and constructive life and to find ways of channeling my energy, knowledge and set of skills towards whatever might be of service to myself (of course), but also to those around me, my community in general and even the world at large, including animals, plants and minerals. The question is:

How can I help?

We could even go so far as to say - in the words of my own teacher - that "To Be or Not To be?" is NOT the question.

In any event, for years the answer has eluded me. Whenever I've thought, "maybe this is it, this is how!", it's turned out not to be the case, and I've gone back to the default position of getting my head down and doing my best at that moment. But always lurking in the background has been the question, "how can I truly be of help here?"

Only recently has it come to my attention that I've half-started gathering resources and then dropping every strategy I've needed to put it all together into a congruent whole, and that what's been lacking hasn't been the content itself but rather, the structure under which they may most effectively be put to good use . Without a framework, without a structure, without a plan, without direction, there cannot be a building, even when all the construction materials are already there.

The intention of this blog is to be helpful, especially to people trying to improve their English language skills, so I'll be focusing on that from now on as I continue to post about life here in the wonderful Mexico City, recently renamed CDMX (Ciudad de M茅xico, in Spanish).

Please leave a comment below about your intentions:

1) Did you make any New Year's resolutions this year?
2) Have you kept them?
3) In what ways are you helpful in your everyday life?

Vocabulary

Which of the highlighted phrases means:

a) to employ or utilise something in a way that is greatly beneficial
b) abandoning or discarding
c) to do something regarded as extreme
d) to direct all your efforts into the particular task you're involved in
e) to happen in a particular way

Production

  • are any of the words/phrases new to you?
  • can you use any of them in a context that is relevant to you?
Go ahead and try! 馃槉
Post your sentence(s) below and please remember to let me know if you agree with my commenting on and/or correcting your English



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