As most of you probably already know, I finished my Master’s degree this past spring (yippee!) and have since went on a grand vacation, went on a second vacation, and finally decided to move back to Spain.
Making the decision to move back to Spain was, in a way, very easy. I was choosing to move back to a place that I had loved and continued to love. I also already had a job (actually, two jobs) and an apartment all set up, just waiting for me to arrive.
But once the decision was ‘made’ and I was finalizing the arrangements, it was actually terrifying. This is the first decision I’ve made without the help of, and indeed in rejection of, society. The looming ‘they’ that tells what we should do and where and when we should do it. The pressure we all feel to follow the trajectory of everyone else.
Ever since high school I have felt the pressure of ‘they’, or for my purposes here, society. I knew I would go to university. And eventually graduate school. And although I modified the trajectory presented to me by studying abroad, and then by living abroad for a year, I never questioned it. University. Graduate school. Job. It wasn’t until the second year of my Master’s that I began to think, “Hey, what if I didn’t stay in the U.S.? What if I went back to Spain?” I honestly was thinking of the happiest time of my life, because I was at my lowest point, and the happiest I ever remember being was in Spain.
That didn’t take the anxiety out of my decision though. It still doesn’t. I love living here, I love walking down the streets, I love sipping coffee in a cafe and watching people walk by, I love the schedule, I love the days off…I love it all. And when I picture my future, I picture it here. And that scares me, not because I feel as though I’ll be missing out on things in the U.S., but because it means really moving my life over here. It’s easy to pack a suitcase knowing you’ll be returning eventually. But packing a suitcase and then when you visit home, packing another, to slowly begin the trek of your favorite items across the ocean? It means getting rid of the majority of your things in your home country, knowing you won’t need them and that they are just taking up space. It means selling your car, your first car, the one you worked so hard to pay off. It means choosing this second culture over your own, and letting your first one go. It means so many different things, things that many of my friends and family members will never experience.
But the most difficult, and perhaps anxiety-inducing thing it means, is going against the grain. Telling society, hey, thank you very much for your input but I think I will do something else. And though this is freeing, it is also strange, because there is an absence of they ‘they’ telling you what to do, what you should do. And with this freedom comes fear–fear to make the right choice, or that you’re not making the right one.
Putting all this aside, I am aware that as long as the choice you make makes you happy, there is no wrong choice. And if you choose something that doesn’t make you happy after all, choose again. There is always a different choice waiting for you. I have never had so many opportunities than I do right now. Liberating, exciting, and also scary. This doesn’t mean I don’t doubt my own decisions on an almost daily basis, because I do. Almost every day I ask myself, but what if I got this job or that job, and moved back? Or, what if I stay here forever? So what? Doubt is a part of life and will never go away. It keeps us questioning and helps us to grow.
And so I return to the quote I discovered my senior year of college, that inspired me and forced me to keep pushing myself. Without it, my life would be extremely different. I shudder to imagine it.
Every day I choose to shun the trajectory that society imposes on us. I choose to ignore society completely. And I hope you will makes decisions that make you happy. And choose to experience life in a different way.
