Do We Travel to Find or to Lose Ourselves?

Monday, March 19, 2018 Cristian 2 Comments


I always cherish my study abroad experiences because they made me who I am today. I love traveling, cultures, languages, photography… I mean, I just love my lifestyle. But when it comes to saying goodbye, to move once again, to leave everything and everyone by saying “I’m not sure if I will ever see you again”, I kind of ask myself if this is all worth it. If it is actually good for me to get close to people and then leave them. If it is fair for me, but also for them. 
I’m extremely grateful that at only 20 years old I lived in four different countries but every single day I miss at least a couple of persons from each place and I feel sad that there’s nothing I can do about it. I can only call them on the phone, and that is only if the time change isn’t wild. Sometimes I even feel like I don’t play a big part in my friends’ lives because whenever it’s time for me to leave, their life will continue to be just the same as always, but mine will reset and start from nothing. Zero. 

Every single thing I do, every single person I meet every day is important to me, but for them, I am probably just someone who happens to be wherever they are at the same time, they already have a life in which I just play the part of an accessory they can live without.


I feel like it’s time for me to take a break; to quit being a nomad and finally find my place in this world. People say that traveling helps to find ourselves, yet I feel completely lost. I’m lost, yes, because I know what I want but I don’t know where I want it. I want to be close to my family, yet the US is the place to be for my career. Although, I loved being in the UK. I even wanted to move to Spain for the summer, but I will definitely not put myself through that if I will have to move again in the fall. 

I wouldn’t change my past because I wouldn’t have met all the people I did meet if it wasn’t for the fact that I traveled so much (just like I said in "Crossing Paths"), but I feel like I need to change. People always tell me that I am brave because I just grab my things and go somewhere new all the time, and it’s true, but sometimes I feel like I’m just afraid of commuting to something that doesn’t have a deadline. I’m having troubles applying for colleges but I’m sure I will find my way eventually, just like everyone else did before me. 

- Cris

2 comments:

Crossing Paths.

Thursday, March 01, 2018 Cristian 0 Comments


Isn't it weird to be walking through a huge crowd of people on a daily basis and having no idea of who all those individuals are? They just happen to be at the same place as you at the same time. Maybe you are completely different but you definitely have something in common: something or someone brought you both to where you are now. 

Lately, I started to believe that everything happens for a reason, even if that hurts us and makes us feel miserable for a little while. I just want to believe that there is a positive outcome, we just have to be strong enough to be able to wait for it to materialize. 

Some of my friends make fun of me because I change my mind fifty times before I make a decision, but there is a reason why I am like this. I believe that decision making is serious because everything we do now leads us to what we will be doing tomorrow and I want to make sure that I spend enough time trying to figure out if that is actually what I want to be doing. 

It's funny because all my headaches are the result of endless time spent deciding where I want to move next but "normal" people suffer from headaches for different reasons, like bills or lack or something or whatever. 

I've so many plans for next summer, and the following fall, that I don't even know what I want in the first place. I want to have plan bs because things just not go as planned sometimes, but on the other hand, I'd like to have fewer options because I just struggle to decide what I want. I only realize I truly want something when I just can't have it anymore and so I work my butt off to prove that I can, somehow, make it work.


So, when I was moving to Great Britain I flew from Milan to London with British Airways. As I was waiting to board, I took a picture of the queue I was in and sent it to my siblings complaining about the fact that my flight was going to be delayed because I was still on the ground when the gate was supposed to be closed already. As I land in London I can hear this girl asking the staff how to get to terminal 3 and so I pitched in and asked her if she was headed there for the same reason as I was. It turns out that she was also going to study at my host university and that she was also Italian. Weeks later I was going through my pictures and I found the picture of the queue and realized that she was literally a few feet away from me. We were both there for the same reason and we didn't know until we were abroad. Wild. But this is not even the first time that I meet someone and find out that we have been at the same place in the past, we just didn't have the chance to meet back then. In June 2013 I met a friend of mine outside Paramore's concert and the year after I met a girl, who's now one of my best friends, who was also there. And I could continue for hours...

Even though I believe that everything happens for a reason, sometimes I feel like traveling led me to lose myself rather than finding myself (traveling to find or to lose ourselves?).

Your turn. What's your story? Have you ever met anyone and realized that you could have actually met earlier than when it actually happened? Also, do you believe in destiny?

- Cris

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