你好，我是栗。我热爱阅读，热爱英语。但英语不是我的母语，也不是我的专业。

曾经，英语离我非常遥远。十二岁之前，我没听过一个英语单词。第一次考试，我只考了三十分。还没分清字母和拼音，就要背单词、记语法。我学着其他同学的样子，在单词头上标注中文——dog 是"多格"，ruler 是"儒乐"。可单词越来越多，句子越来越长，我追不上了。我以为自己会一直待在英语的阴影里。

直到遇见大伯，一位没有牙的英语老师。他教我音标和拼读，教我自学。他说，英语不只是一门考试科目，而是一个广阔的世界。我永远记得那个又湿又冷的冬夜，他教我们唱 “You Are My Sunshine”。

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine

You make me happy when skies are gray

You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you

Please don’t take my sunshine away.

在天无三日晴的地方，大伯教会我唱这支阳光灿烂的歌。我常在四下无人的时候哼它——趴在写不完的作业堆里时，一个人走在冬夜里时。这首歌给了我勇气，让我知道：山外有一个和煦的世界在等我。

带着这份勇气，我从山里走出来，英语成了我的工作语言。我用它写邮件、做方案、开电话会。但我总觉得，我们的故事不止于此——我的心里时不时会响起那段旋律。“You Are My Sunshine”，像一种模糊的召唤：那个更和煦的世界，我尚未抵达；而我的阳光，不该只是我的工具。

四十二岁，我决定放下一切，去找那束光。也许，学习如何教英语能让我找到答案——两年里，我取得了剑桥大学 CELTA 与 TKT 认证。剑桥教我如何"教"，也让我思考更重要的问题：为什么而教？为什么而学？

我终于明白，那束光不是分数，也不是职位，是使用英语开拓眼界的喜悦；是每一次跨越山海找到知音的喜悦，是读完一本英语书的喜悦，是知道我可以随时出发的喜悦。我想安住在这份喜悦里，也分享这份喜悦。

这一次，不要再 “Abandon”，要 “Activate”。

Hi, I’m Leigh. I love reading, and I love English. But English is not my first language, and it wasn’t my major.

For a long time, English felt far away. Until I was twelve, I had never heard a single English word. I still couldn’t tell the alphabet from pinyin when I had to memorize words and grammar. I copied the other kids and wrote Chinese sounds above the words — dog became “duō gé,” ruler became “rú lè.” But the words piled up, the sentences got longer, and I fell behind. On my first English test, I scored thirty out of a hundred. I thought I would always live in the shadow of English.

Then came Uncle Bo, an English teacher with no teeth. He taught me phonics, and he taught me how to teach myself. He told me English was not just a subject on a test — it was a wide world. I will never forget that cold, wet winter night when he taught us to sing “You Are My Sunshine.”

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine

You make me happy when skies are gray

You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you

Please don’t take my sunshine away.

In a place where it never stays sunny for three days straight, Uncle Bo taught us to sing a song full of sunlight. I used to hum it when no one was around — bent over homework I could never finish, walking alone at winter nights. The song told me there was a warm world waiting for me beyond the mountains.

Then I walked out of the mountains, and use English as my working language. I wrote emails, made proposals ran conference calls. But I always felt my story with English wasn’t finished. From time to time, the melody came back to me. “You Are My Sunshine” sounded like a calling: the warmer world, I had not yet reached; and my sunshine should not be just my tool.

At forty-two, I went to find that light. Maybe learning to teach English would give me the answer. In two years, I earned my CELTA and TKT certificates from Cambridge. Cambridge taught me how to teach — and made me ask bigger questions: Why teach? Why learn?

At last I understood. The light was not my test scores or my job. My light is joy. Again and again, in Englishg, I find my whole self back.

This time, not “Abandon.” “Activate.”