I moved away
Have you ever seen Tim Burton's Big Fish movie? At least do you know about the title meaning? The film main character is a person with a huge personality, he lives in a town where there is no difference between a day and its previous one. At some point someone suggests him to go away because he is like a big fish inside a small pond. If the fish remained in that pond, it would never grow up. But if the fish was thrown to the sea, it could completely grow to its real size, like it would happen to the main character.
I never felt like a big fish inside a small pond. I only was another fish in a little pond, and I had spent more than thirty years of my life stuck in that tiny portion of water. The idea of going outside of my environment was not appealing to me in all that time. It sounded like something too hard despite of the benefits I could have obtained in exchange. I had my friends there, my family, my favorite corners, and my possessions. In another city or country I would have had nothing. As I said, I was sure about the personal advantages of going away, it is just I chose to live my life by default, without listening that inner voice which was whispering how much I needed to go.
Several months ago a friend of mine started a business in a foreign country and offered me a job on it. The country was not the most suitable destination for me at that moment, neither was the workplace. However I saw his offering like an opportunity to break up with everything I had and do what I needed to do for so long. So I stored all my possessions in boxes, which I stacked in an old wardrobe from my parents house, said goodbye to all my friends and family, took my cat and some pieces of clothes, and accepted the job.
Now I am far away from the place which I considered my home.
Ok, there is nothing singular in what I did. There are zillions of expatriates around the world, nowadays even twenty-somethings travel internationally thanks to grants. What makes my case worth of being written is my motivation for not returning home in short, my keenness to grow up, my detachment, and my aim to be something like a digital nomad (digital nomads are people who, because of their type of job, are not stuck to a workplace. They are able to work while are also travelling the world).
I have always heard around that travelling can teach us a lot of things. However I do not think that any type of tour serves for doing that. Take as example the prefabricated tourism: we can not obtain the same value from living between residents as from sleeping in hotels after days of taking photos from the most iconic places, just to cross out another city from the list. When you live abroad you have to face different inconveniences and to reinforce some of your social skills. You have to defeat your shyness to ask about directions, to strengthen yourself to handle emergencies, to solve common situations that in your own country would not be such a problem. I knew that I needed to learn all those things for long time. So I cut some ties, broke my boundaries, and freed myself from spiritual weights.
When somebody asks me about my departure I always answer that I did because I was really happy where I was, so happy that I needed a change. Now I'm studying german with eagerness because I plan to move to Germany soon. It is something that would not have come to my mind if I still was in the place where I am from. I would not needed it. And perhaps I am not doing all the steps forward I would like to, but the door is open, the world is really huge, and I'm really little.