Exploring, Learning and Adventuring the World Around Me

I sat in my four-by-five foot cubicle staring at the computer screen. The highlighted cell on the spreadsheet stared back at me. I glanced at my to do list and back at my computer.

It hit me: I was 23 years old, and I had spent 98 percent of my life within the confines of a 30-mile radius. My life — my childhood, my education, my job, my network: everything I knew — fit into a perfect circle. I felt my chest tighten from the claustrophobia as I frantically searched how many square miles there are in the world: 196,940,000.

It’s not that the moment passed, but it’s that I didn’t know what to make of it. So I tried to forget the moment of panic and turned back to the highlighted cell, crossed something off my to do list and left for the day.

Whatever happened that day — the realization or the fright, whatever it was — I couldn’t let it go. I found myself stuck. Stuck in the day-to-day routine, stuck between the balance of comfort and predictability.

I couldn’t shake the thought of the world revolving around me. The world forgetting that I was a part of it — or maybe it was me forgetting that I was a part of the world.

So I sat. I waited for someone to help, someone to tell me what to do. You wait, and before you know it, you’ve spent your entire life waiting for this so-called life to start. I had to realize that there was no one to help, no one to tell me what to do.

I had the type of job that my mom kept calling a career. I had recently been promoted into a leadership position. I had respect from leaders and peers in the organization. I had the flexibility, the comfort and the stability that I know too few in the world have.

But staring out the window in those moments of vivid clarity, I realized that no career would define my meaning of life or my place in the world. I couldn’t wait for someone else to define it for me. My mind unraveled into this constant push-pull of thoughts between exploring and experiencing the world and grappling with my love for routine and consistency.

Nearly eight months later, I sat on the plane descending towards a city of nine million people — with an estimated eight million motorbikes — trying to frantically remind myself why I had taken a job that left everything and everyone I knew for a country I had never been to and a culture I couldn’t yet begin to understand.

I left the airport still convincing myself this was everything I had wanted; it was everything I needed — professionally and personally. The way most people saw it was that I had foregone stability: a career, an income, a network. In that moment, walking through the airport into a sea of unfamiliar faces, I almost believed them.

I finally realized that this was it — the defining moment — where I was, I am, completely alone for the first time in my entire life.

Forty four days. It has only — or depending on how you look at it, it has already — been 44 days in Asia. I would be lying to you if I said this was easy — to pick up and move away, to defy the comforts of home, to navigate a new culture, and to try to understand the complexities, values and deep-rooted ways of life. I’ve had moments where I laughed so hard I started sweating…again. I’ve had moments of frustration and confusion for the way things are. I’ve had moments of shock. I’ve had moments of vulnerability. I’ve had moments of question where I try to answer what I am doing here and why I am doing it.

But as hard as it can be to transition and to navigate the underlying complexities, I would be lying to you again if I didn’t already recognize that this experience and these moments — they’ve changed me. Whether it’s singing karaoke in front of two hundred coworkers, finding joy in the steaming bowl of noodles as sweat drips from my forehead or navigating the gender roles of two complexly different worlds, each moment has changed the way I see, interact with and perceive the world before me.

Forty four days.

Forty four days have become the most significant — personally and professionally — defining moments of my 24 years.

On learning:

• To be alone: Forced from your comfort zone. Forced to take in your surroundings. Forced to witness. Forced to understand, recognize and comprehend the serene chaos around you. Forced to explore and to adventure. Forced to say yes. Forced to say no. Forced to trust yourself. Forced to define your own moments. Forced to take in each moment. Forced to understand yourself and your own happiness. Forced to breathe. Forced to think, to contemplate and to reflect. Forced to be overcome by the beauty that surrounds you. Forced to be proud of what you’ve done and how far you’ve come.
• A new culture: I am paranoid of disrespecting the culture and the people who have welcomed me into their lives, their culture and their country. But I’m finding that the only way to truly learn is to quit asking about it, quit reading about it, and instead start experiencing it by observing it all first. Observing the people, the places, the customs and the patterns that surround me.
• That challenge is not about what we know, but about what we don’t know: The challenge of life, of learning, of being is about overcoming and understanding what we don’t know to challenge what we do.
• That the world is completely different than how it’s perceived. And I have so much more to learn.