Before and after - thoughts after a week back in my casa

You know what: calling your travels eye-opening and grounding, saying you got to know yourself better and realized that you are a person that needs a certain time alone. Going on and on about how you are a more grateful person. THAT SUCKS

It’s all true though;) I’ve heard that so often, and I find it superficial every single time when it is put like that. I’d like to go up to these people saying: Yo, I like that after all these travels you haven’t really changed… The person goes like: Oh but I have grown so much personally! I go: Yeah, but you still only talk about yourself all the time.

If Nepal has taught me one thing it’s that really we’re all self-centered pricks making a big deal about every single time we do something for another person without taking personal interest, meanwhile, most “simple” people in South America, Africa, and Asia are giving, really giving, selflessly, ALL THE TIME, never praise themselves EVER, and hold this as the biggest virtue of a person.

While I was there, I was constantly face to face with this clash of values: I value personal success, and I secretly wished for all of the young people I worked with, that they would “make it” in the same way I wish to make it for myself as well.

Go to university, kill it in my exams, be really ambitious in what “Big cause” I’ll dedicate myself to, and ultimately do something really really meaningful.

In my Epiphany, I’d meet them one day in Europe, where they all told they’d want to visit one day, at a conference on the Action Plan of introducing Nanotechnology in the High Tech Isolation system or something like that pff. And then I’d be really proud.

Truth is, their vision of “making it” is very different to mine, doing something they’ll be proud of means looking after their whole family, earning enough to send their small siblings to High School. The moment they are really proud is the moment their grandma gets their denture, or they can help pay for their cousins wedding, ….

And there’s a million things more that their family needs them for, and there I was saying the only way I would be proud of them is if they’d neglect all of these responsibilities and only care for their personal success??

Without meeting so many people living it, I never gave much thought to what they’re really is to „simple life“. For myself, I always wanted grand projects, drama, and passion and ups and downs and everything.

One thing, I caught myself thinking when I was calling home, and everyone was still doing the same jobs, same courses and studying the same way, was that my friends are on stand-still, not exposing themselves to much, never „out“, always influenced by others, plainly: on the right path towards a boring life…

It was really because I was fixed in my perception what „everyone“ should „always“ do to make the most of their freedom after high school, that I was condemning everyone who didn’t go as far away as possible from what we knew for not having the guts to do what I thought they wanted.

Truth is I know full well that most of my friends are doing EXACTLY what they wanted for themselves. They‘re right where they feel like they need to be, in the same way as I felt like it was the right time 100% to go to Nepal.

We all made choices, and as long as you feel like your choice is your own and not the one of your parents or teachers or one of the 183738118 other people who love to tell 19teen-year-olds what to do with their life. Your good.

YOU DON‘T HAVE TO WALK AROUND LOOKING LIKE A LOST LAMPPOST IN A DEVELOPING COUNTRY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD IN ORDER TO BE AN HUMBLE AND OPEN PERSON! (!!!!)

I don‘t want my „kind“ of travel and volunteering to be depicted as the antidote to ungratefulness and arrogance. I met plenty of people who had traveled in Asia for months and were still more close-minded than a grandma in Luxembourg who never went further than the Black Forest.

It’s like we all have traveled so much, we need more and more to be impressed. In times when Bali is basic, where the hell should we go for our „big trips“?

Heyoo, I myself have traveled SO MUCH with my parents. Though I had never been to Asia, they were moments like for example when I was paragliding over a lake with a view of the Himalayas (the dopest thing ever), where I thought „remember in Canada there was a lake like that too, and in Peru as well“

It was a bit of a „been there, done that“ feeling in a moment where I actually had really hoped to think of nothing else but about how spectacular and unique the thing I was just doing was. I think many other travelers our age also have moments like this, wondering if they are not numbing down experiences because they‘re seeing too much too fast…

Taking 8-hour flights to far off places on easter holidays is our normal. We come back from the other side of the world, in 2 weeks we might see a lot, but really we have never really had time to let that get to us, did we?

Only rarely do we allow ourselves to see our perspective as a work in progress, and are able to take in fragments of what we see to become part of us, our world view.

Do we even have such a thing? Many people have traveled a good part of it while they’re our age, but couldn‘t tell you the language native people speak in the countries they‘ve visited.

Nepal affected me, of course. And I let it. Giving myself enough time (4 months) in one place to take ownership for what I felt there before moving to. I was never able to do this before, so Nepal will always stay entirely unique to me because I LIVED in it in such a special way.

And now I’m talking about myself but I think you’ll forgive me because for lack of other options I’m forced to. My own perspective is the only own I’ve ever known, and I content myself thinking that even though 1000 other volunteers have documented their time abroad, my perspective is still valuable, because it’s less superficial and more critical than the ones of those who I complained about earlier (the ego-centric constantly talking about how grateful they are).

Here we go:

this is what I came up with while thinking about my very own before and after. My energies in motions ya know

Last autumn, I was working, thinking about the usual (Uni application, trips with friends, visits to Granny etc). I was really excited to finally take one of the bigger steps to becoming someone I’ll be happy to introduce myself as (e.g: the girl who rode on top of a bus in Nepal with 4 monks and 3 chickens - something of that sort haha).

Before it kind of felt like I was floating, right into Nepal where that feeling persisted in the first two months I’d say. See, I had all the freedom to go with the flow, and it was really really nice to be able to say yes to whatever anyone offered to do, few obligations, no having to look at your watch. It was great to have all these really good and funny stories create themselves out of nothing, I never expected any of them, they just built up right out of my “no-plan” basis.

And for the whole time, I loved that. To see how easy-going I became on the simple condition that I took enough time for things. Nepalis are great at not hurrying, and I learned a lot of that:)

Unsure if I mentioned this before, but 19teen seems to me to be an age where you’re influenced a lot by what you’re exposed to. All your character and views and principles are still changing, you work on them unconsciously and for that, you use whatever you see in your environment. If that happens to be strict Uni, you might be incorporating discipline and punctuality in your own set of values that you’ll live by for the rest of your life.

For me, I was exposed to life in a close-knight community, where people had hard work and the ability to approach their hardship with humor.

The values they held high and that I copied from them and let become part of my own are consistency in work, inclusiveness in community and above all the ability to see what you need and what you don’t (!!)

I value that more now, I’m more aware that this is what I aspire to. In that sense, that’s how Nepal changed me.

I’ve also gotten pro at telling friends what’s up, getting feelings to the point because we only talked for an hour and I had accumulated 73272616 things that I sought advice or second opinions about.

I no longer make a big deal out of things I used to spend more time thinking about than actually doing: doing the dishes, going running…

I think that’s part of an “it could be so much worse” attitude that’s proven really useful to keep shit real, I hope that stays.

That’s really about it for everything I’ve noticed so far. I’ll report back next week with news on what else suddenly dawned on me.

As for my future plans, I’ll keep them non-existent for the time being. You can probably tell that I’m bo going back to Nepal if I have less than a month there. I’ve become a big fan of this “lots of time and no plan” backpacking, and I’ll definitely do that again as soon as I have at least 6 weeks. In case that that’s not this summer, I’ll stick to Europe. Interrail through France would be nice, also wouldn’t mind helping Spain and Italy back on their feet a little when I can hang around there.

How about the black forest? If the open-minded grandma was there maybe that's where the antidote to arrogant living lies. Oops, I’m still looking for a single-shot answer…

There’s none, this is a long term thing, but Nepal definitely did a lot to get me closer to an answer.

So this is day 10 for me en el quaranteña, I’m puzzling and puzzled while learning el espagnoletta.

Happy to see you guys soon, apparently we’re all advised to chill out in our countries to support our own lil’enterprises. So I’ll see y’all at Stausei, shooting Insta’s that make it seem like our travels to fucking Bali wasn’t canceled. At one point we’ll realize how pretty 3sqm big Luxembourg is, and might even end up visiting that castle in the north. And then we’ll all stop saying: OMG, I love Australia!! like that was normal.

In Friendship,

Teddy Smile