As someone that's studied Spanish intensively for the last four years, I've come to the conclusion that fluency is somewhat arbitrary and also that learning a l

As someone that's studied Spanish intensively for the last four years, I've come to the conclusion that fluency is somewhat arbitrary and also that learning a language should be a goal directed activity. Are you learning the language to travel? Are you learning the language to read the classics? To integrate with a family, etc? I have mental mile markers, which are mostly comprised of situations where I've embarrassed myself in the past. In looking back on these mile markers, it becomes obvious how far I've come, which should feel great; however, I think most of us are attuned to focusing on our deficits rather than our successes ("I should have been able to understand that conversation I overheard, etc"). At the end of the day, I think of language learning as a lifetime journey rather than a destination, and this has allowed me to make peace with my deficits. I also think there's no substitute in the world for slogging through hundreds of improvised conversations, with our barbarisms in full view, and learning a little bit each time. People idealize fluency as some kind of holy grail, but at the end of the day, we're really just trying to communicate with each other, are we not?