Come away
Today we’re going to talk about the English expression “come away.” You’re typically used to saying “go away” and “come here.” So at first, “come away” sounds like a contradiction—and it would be a contradiction, if we were talking about movement.
“Come away” has nothing to do with movement. To “come away” is to have a feeling, an impression, or a result after an experience. There are a few ingredients to “come away.” You need an experience and you need a feeling or result that this experience causes you. So in the next examples, I want you to listen for the experience and listen for the feeling.
Remember the “immersive” Van Gogh experience I told you about? I came away from that feeling cheated. It was expensive, short, and honestly not very good compared to seeing real paintings. What’s the experience? Going to the “immersive” Van Gogh show. What’s the feeling? I felt cheated. So we can say that JR and I paid a lot of money to see that, and we both came away feeling a cheated.
Remember that we use “come away” with feelings or results. So this is an example with results.
I recently webinar about marketing. It was very informative and I came away from that webinar with a lot of good ideas. What was the experience? I went to the webinar. What was the result? I got a lot of good ideas.
Think back to your last job interview. Did you come away from the interview feeling confident? Or did you come away from that with some doubts? I haven’t had a job interview in over 13 years. Hopefully—and I say this as a business owner —hopefully I’ll never have another one.
But I have had interviews as part of my job, where my colleagues and I are trying to win projects from potential clients. Sometimes I come away from the interviews with a good feeling. Other times I come away feeling that we didn’t do a good enough job in the interview. Those are feelings. Then, there are the really good interviews: we come away with an agreement to do some work. That’s not a feeling, but a result—a good one! And we can use “come away with” with either a feeling or a result.
Think back to earlier in the lesson: did you hear “come away with” in the context of a feeling or a result? Let me refresh your memory. Remember Jet Blue? I had a little fun with their mission statement. They are the seventh-biggest airline in the world’s third-biggest country. But that hasn’t stopped them from adopting a rather ambitious corporate mission statement : to inspire humanity (humanity!) both in the air and on the ground.
I told you that I’ve flown Jet Blue—an experience—and I didn’t come away feeling inspired. So if they didn’t inspire me as a customer, I don’t know how they’re going to inspire all the rest of us on the ground that aren’t customers. I didn’t come away feeling inspired: same pattern, just negative instead of positive.
JR’s song of the week
It’s time for this week’s song of the week. JR has selected “Going Gets Tough” by The Growlers. I love this song! I just listened to it for the first time. This is an expression in English: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” That means, when things get hard, strong people get to work. And so this song, “Going Gets Tough” is about difficulties in a relationship.
Here’s the line I like, “When the going gets tough, the labor of our love will reward us soon enough.” I really like that one—and I also like the sound of this one. So good job, JR, great, great song this week. “Going Gets Tough” by The Growlers.
See you next time!
And that’s all for today’s Plain English. Congratulations on all the great work you’re doing to upgrade your English; I’m really honored to be a small part of your life. I know so many of you listen while you’re out walking, commuting, cooking…some people even listen right before bed. So thank you for inviting me into your life and congratulations on challenging yourself. I mean that; we don’t talk about easy stuff here. If you’re listening to these episodes, even if you don’t quite get every word, you’re thinking at a high level in English, and I think that is just great.
As always, we’ll be back on Monday with a complete new lesson; see you then!
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