(in retrospect)
Going away was almost like an escape. If not from someone in specific, definitely from stagnation. When you live in the same city with the same people all your life, you risk losing yourself because you come to exist through their eyes. The people around you have come to accept you and love you for what you are…you have no chance of becoming different, better or worse. But in a foreign country people do not know you, they do not care about you, so they do no have to justify you, your actions, character or behaviour. The way you behave is the only truth for them and they will judge you by it. They act as your mirrors. The fresh eyes of the foreigners, thus, give you a chance not only to be the real you, but also to be a better you…
When you find yourself away from your home, country and people that know you well, you often experience the feeling of losing touch with yourself. When everything is new, when new experiences “attack” you daily, when you are constantly trying to adapt to the environment and the changes around you, you eventually become alienated from your self. You have no time to talk to yourself and discuss what’s going on. The body and the soul take their own separate ways and never meet. Sometimes you feel bodiless, selfless. It seems like when there are not people to justify and reaffirm the existence of the self, your self, when basically, emotionally you are all alone, with no one to encounter, to see you, acknowledge your existence, all that’s left is the body, so the self disappears; it falls out of use…
I feel so invisible in this strange city. People pass beside me like actors in some play, but no lines seem to have been written for me. I came here with a purpose, but suddenly this purpose eludes me. I do not miss my home which is good, I do not feel lonely, which is a blessing, but I feel lost and purposeless, useless; I make no difference to anyone’s life and this makes me feel empty. I feel like an extra in another’s movie with no role written for me. I want to say something, but I yet know not what. Nobody cares, and why should they? But what am I doing here? Everyone I meet seems to have landed here drawn by love (guys followed their girlfriends, girls followed their boyfriends). I followed no one but fate; she said “this is where you should go,” but she did not say why…
This is my city. Or so it became eventually…mine. I think this happens with every city that you live in for a while. At the end you come to possess it; it becomes part of you in the same way you become part of it. In a way, even, the city becomes you, an aspect of you. A city is like a piece of art. A city is something that you create by putting together the pieces that appeal to you. We all may be living in the same city, but in effect we live in different cities, the cities that we choose to see, the cities that come to life through our eyes…
At the beginning the city looks hostile and un-inviting. It is only gradually that you become acquainted with its odours, its corners, its colours, its people. By the end you are no longer an alien. Maybe because the city and its people stop being alien to you. When the aliens stop being aliens, that’s when they become citizens of the world…
Going away was almost like an escape. If not from someone in specific, definitely from stagnation. When you live in the same city with the same people all your life, you risk losing yourself because you come to exist through their eyes. The people around you have come to accept you and love you for what you are…you have no chance of becoming different, better or worse. But in a foreign country people do not know you, they do not care about you, so they do no have to justify you, your actions, character or behaviour. The way you behave is the only truth for them and they will judge you by it. They act as your mirrors. The fresh eyes of the foreigners, thus, give you a chance not only to be the real you, but also to be a better you…
When you find yourself away from your home, country and people that know you well, you often experience the feeling of losing touch with yourself. When everything is new, when new experiences “attack” you daily, when you are constantly trying to adapt to the environment and the changes around you, you eventually become alienated from your self. You have no time to talk to yourself and discuss what’s going on. The body and the soul take their own separate ways and never meet. Sometimes you feel bodiless, selfless. It seems like when there are not people to justify and reaffirm the existence of the self, your self, when basically, emotionally you are all alone, with no one to encounter, to see you, acknowledge your existence, all that’s left is the body, so the self disappears; it falls out of use…
I feel so invisible in this strange city. People pass beside me like actors in some play, but no lines seem to have been written for me. I came here with a purpose, but suddenly this purpose eludes me. I do not miss my home which is good, I do not feel lonely, which is a blessing, but I feel lost and purposeless, useless; I make no difference to anyone’s life and this makes me feel empty. I feel like an extra in another’s movie with no role written for me. I want to say something, but I yet know not what. Nobody cares, and why should they? But what am I doing here? Everyone I meet seems to have landed here drawn by love (guys followed their girlfriends, girls followed their boyfriends). I followed no one but fate; she said “this is where you should go,” but she did not say why…
This is my city. Or so it became eventually…mine. I think this happens with every city that you live in for a while. At the end you come to possess it; it becomes part of you in the same way you become part of it. In a way, even, the city becomes you, an aspect of you. A city is like a piece of art. A city is something that you create by putting together the pieces that appeal to you. We all may be living in the same city, but in effect we live in different cities, the cities that we choose to see, the cities that come to life through our eyes…
At the beginning the city looks hostile and un-inviting. It is only gradually that you become acquainted with its odours, its corners, its colours, its people. By the end you are no longer an alien. Maybe because the city and its people stop being alien to you. When the aliens stop being aliens, that’s when they become citizens of the world…
