People, life, issues, opportunities, relationships, work;
these are all fundamental elements of our day-to-day repertoire of situations
that we have to face constantly in our life. However, when living in your home
country all of these challenges are just ‘normal’, we call it routine and we
begin to forget the real meaning of the little shades that every day life
offers us. We are sure that is how the ‘world works’. We strengthen our beliefs
around how safe environment and we forget to look at the bigger picture, to
understand that everything matters, which goes beyond our personal beliefs.
What I find interesting is how experiencing new things, visiting
new places and meeting different people, changes the way we think, behave and
relate to others.
Living in a different country made me realise that before
moving abroad for my first time I did not truly understand the real meaning of
cultures and perspectives.
What I truly believe is that it does not matter where we
come from or what religion we believe in at the end of the day we are all
essentially the same. We like to meet people, have fun, play games, follow our
passions and genuinely be part of something.
However, in most cases we fail to understand that since
everyone is the same, we all have common fears, concerns, prejudices, which
depending on multiple factors (country history, traditions, religion, language,
etc.) will shape our behaviour and attitude towards life.
Therefore, living for your entire life in only one country,
it seems like we are missing something, we cannot see the bigger picture, we
cannot understand that the world is not that bad and actually offers a great deal
of opportunities to live your life to the best. Travelling and living abroad
helps re-develop that attention to details that we had so strong when we were
kids as well as feeling proud even for little achievements. Paying (more)
attention to our everyday life, it can be a really powerful tool to understand
cultures and others peoples perspectives. For instance, saying ‘cheers!’ to the
bus driver when getting off, sensing new smells in the air, crossing the road
or going to a takeaway are all little factors which break our routine to which
we were used to back in our home countries.
I call it the ‘two eyes theory’, living in only one country
gives us only one perspective or point of view, which we believe is true and
cannot be argued with. Everyone is absolutely sure that their country are doing
it better or in the right way, while we fail to understand that things can be
done in different ways based on our country background and the resources
provided for the specific purposes. Therefore in an abstract way, living in
different countries and experiencing different realities it is a great way to
be able to see things more clearly, from multiple perspectives. This means that
we will be more tolerant and open about new ideologies and others people
attitudes and behaviours. Moreover, we will be able to build a better future
for ourselves and for the people we care about. Re-discovering little pleasures
that we had long forgotten helps enhance our creativity and willingness to
always do better, in order to live a happier life. Living in such a globalised
world adapting to different points of view is the true key to happiness.
Changing or improving our mentality is an essential step that everyone in life
should go through.
‘Seeing with both eyes’ will deeply change our beliefs and
reshape our way of approaching every challenge that we will face in our future
with a strange optimism. The reason is that we will be able to truly understand
that we are just part of a bigger picture and we need to be ready to see more
clearly opportunities that are presented to us during our life experience.
So get out there, live your life, travel, experience new
things and make mistakes, because that is the only true way of learning, by
understanding what you believe is wrong or right by being able to draw from
your knowledge of different viewpoints. Living abroad is one of the experiences
that really stresses these points and will help you overcome your fears and
preconceptions that we previously believed in.
By Gianluca (@GianluShalla)
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