Some Lessons Learned

Airplane Rides

Some friends told me that it took a lot of guts to go to another country all by myself. I mean, I traveled alone (think of three airplane rides and the tormenting hours of waiting), and I do not have any friends or relatives in my country of destination. This may be an overstatement, but they were "amazed" at how I was able to manage all the traveling alone and living independently in another country stuff.

But there is nothing amazing about it. It is not like you are going to walk and rely on clues and maps (although that would be much more interesting). You take the right plane, then another right plane, and another right plane, and lo and behold, you are in your country of destination.

Life's Lesson on "Readiness"

Now, I don't believe in not trying something out because of that "I'm not yet ready" cliche. I've learned that you cannot be ready for anything. What you can do is decide to go for it or not, and deal with the regrets that go with the decision later. It's like when you badly want to blog about something, but you just don't know where to start. You say, "No, I'm not ready to blog about this." But, you cannot be ready until you start typing out the first word or first sentence or first paragraph of your entry.

Choosing to live very far away from home is like writing that blog entry you think you are not ready to write. Was I ready for it? All I knew was that I was not obsessing over thinking whether I was ready or not. What I knew was I wanted some change to happen in my life before the year ended. When an opportunity came, I grabbed it without expectations of sorts. I did not know whether I was ready or not. And it paid off.