My time traversing Europe aboard trains and planes and buses, and all other variations of transportation provided me with a great many hours of reflection. Numerous existential contemplations crossed my mind but none quite as pressing as that of: who am I and where am I going? My train tickets certainly couldn’t tell me. And to be perfectly honest, I still don’t know. I’ve been sitting here in the back of a café for twenty minutes continuing to think on it.
These kinds of questions used to scare me. Up until recently I felt this great pressure to reach certain goals, checkpoints that would tell me I was still being successful. That I was still using my life the way I was supposed to. But the thing was that I didn’t know what those checkpoints were or how to get to them. I said I knew where I was going because the idea of saying otherwise seemed risky. I’ve always been anxious of being lost, but that’s all I was for the past four months: stumbling through the French language, through the culture, lost in every new city I entered—thank god for Google Maps and kindred spirits. Never have I been so helpless, and so empowered for it. I was forced to accept—and subsequently embrace—the fact that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. And one way or another, that realization translated to my life as a whole.
More than good taste in coffee or an international collection of friends, France gave me a sense of peace, with myself and with life. Perhaps it’s something in the way that even amongst the chaos of a Parisian street, grey-haired men sit calmly, sipping their espressos and watching the world go by. Maybe it’s something in the way that a woman bikes a detour en route home to take in the tranquility of the sea. In something I realized how I’d been focusing too much on where my path led that I’d been neglecting to watch the road beneath my feet. The French have a saying I heard from all manner of folk in all manner of contexts: prendre le temps de vivre—take the time to live. Though unpredictable decisions and changes ahead used to terrify me, this philosophy of embracing every moment somehow puts my mind at peace with the unknown.
All of this is not to say that I’ve forsaken all thought of the future, that I shed my academic and professional goals and left the skins in Europe. In fact, I think traveling granted me a fresh inspiration and drive towards a new world of possibilities. It’s just that now, rather than living transitionally between a set of checkpoints, I want to live for life itself.
More so than for anything else, to everyone I recommend studying abroad purely for the personal development. Something about displacing yourself and finding a home elsewhere in this big, big world provides the perfect recipe for growth. The fact of the matter is that I’ll never stop wondering where I’m going, nor do I want to. However, I’ve changed to asking that question not with anxiety, but with excitement. And now I ask you too: where are you going?