
At 31, I decided to put a hold on the 9–5 routine of life, which I swear will kill you sooner than you think if you aren’t doing something you love, and I spent a month living in Buenos Aires, Argentina with a group of about 25 beautiful souls who shared many of my same views on life. We were all there as part of a program called “Unsettled,” which curates month-long experiences for adult social rebels who find fulfillment in actually experiencing life rather than spending 8+ hours a day at a desk watching the world pass by on a computer or TV screen.
31 might seem a little old for study abroad, according to the societal timeline I once believed to be the marker of success throughout my adolescence, however, I also think that by the time you are 31, you realize that all of your life milestones should be 100% created by you and not anyone else.
While I have never claimed that this experience “changed” me the way that drastically altering one’s surroundings and stepping outside of an adult comfort zone may change some people, I do believe that I learned a few things throughout the experience.
1. Removing yourself from your “real” life will accentuate certain parts of your personality, which will make you more “you” than you typically are in your “real life.”
Routines are personality killers. How many times do you do what you do every single day and you begin to feel like a robot. Stop that. That isn’t you. Switch it up a little bit, and you’ll meet yourself. By removing all the routine things that made me “me” in my “real life,” I could really experience my authentic personality in a foreign setting. The observations of others who met me on this experience confirmed this to me. Their comments about me seemed to be much closer to how I view myself than what some of those back home had said about me. Maybe I wasn’t being my authentic self at home because my job, friends, and my family had expectations that I was subconsciously adhering to that weren’t “me.” Separating from the dull routine we often get ourselves stuck in can bring out some of the more vibrant aspects of our personalities.
2. You will lose friends who don’t truly understand you or your journey.
Some of these friends you will lose because they are jealous that you’re experimenting with something new. Some of your friends will fade because they don’t support you or your goals. Some of them will abandon you because they don’t understand the need or desire for a different life than theirs. And others will simply dissolve into the past because they were never really friends to begin with, and in your short absence, they simply forgot about you. In any of these cases, that’s OK. I learned that you can make new friends, even in your 30s, and they are just as wonderful and can be even more supportive of the authentic you.
3. Home is a feeling, not just a place.
OK, so I already suspected this, but spending a month abroad confirmed it to me. Home is not necessarily where you live, or even a physical location. Home and happiness are tied very closely to each other. When you close your eyes and envision “home,” pay attention to the feeling you experience; that is home. We did an experiment like this when I was abroad, and the life I envisioned wasn’t necessarily in my physical location of “home,” but it was more of a feeling of love, safety, and warmth. You can feel lonely, unsafe, and unwelcomed in the place where you sleep every night even if you call that place your “home.” But that’s not really your home. And If that is the case, then you’ve got to work your ass off to get to where you really feel like you are home — with all the good feelings attached.
You will thrive in your happy home, but living a life where you don’t feel the positive feelings of home will slowly kill your spirit. At any age, it’s important to discover your home, even if you have to go around the world to find out what it really feels like to be there.
