when self-awareness is undesirable
To be conscious of inadequacy is bad enough; to be conscious of inadequacy, having tasted mastery - that is monstrously frustrating. This is the case for piano - why I've never taken up another instrument - and for Mandarin, where my grasp of the language, being almost entirely verbal, colloquial and informal, suffers an upper limit that my understanding of English has not known for a while now. No book in English is entirely barred to me (desire to read is a different matter); this is not the case for Mandarin, and the sheer volume of literature out there that I am as yet unable to read - and desire to - is Seriously Annoying (TM). But the drive for proficiency, mastery - it's a fully futile pursuit, and yet this is all that can - should - occupy the few blinks we have between issue and oblivion.
Think I'm learning French next year. Save me.