Overdenkingen van een jaarstudent

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone" - Neale Donald Walsch

As I sit here listening to the beauty of music, gazing at the horizons of windmills and flat grounds, I question myself to why, why did I ever leave home to set out on a journey to connect with complete strangers and live to their standards? Why did I so badly want to step out of my comfort zone, leave behind everything I have grown up to be acquainted with, simply to start new? Maybe it was something calling me, maybe it was just spontaneous. Whatever the higher answer may be, I did it anyway. I leaped. I didn't know what this crazy adventure would hand to me, or what I'd learn from it. Honestly, I didn't even know what an exchange year holds for one, as human, as soul, as traveler. Even through the process of this year, where it got dark, I somehow could still feel a fire inside me, that ignited inner faith day by day and kept me moving forward - only to see the outcome. Well here I sit, still gazing at these beautiful fields of potatoes, in a lonely town hidden somewhere in the North of the Netherlands, and this, who is sitting here, is the outcome. I may not be able to explain why any crazy human being would want to travel to the other side of the world at a young and vulnerable age, with no man beside him he's ever seen before, with absolutely no knowledge of how less than 365days can change the way your heart beats, whether it be to life, perspective or love, and day by day struggling to live in a whole different world. Although, I may be able to explain that if I didn't take that chance, if I didn't listen to my heart, I would not be sitting here, embracing this beauty of mind at peace, saying to myself that the year of 2015 is a year that opened my eyes, and opened my heart. I have learned to love the weirdest people and the weirdest things, that make life truly spectacular. I have learned to seize every smile thrown at me, and capture 'ordinary life' moments that actually go way deeper, and mean much more to me than the simplicity of the situation. I have learned how to hand my heart to a stranger. I have learned how to handle the great responsibility of trust. I have learned how to gather my mind on foreign grounds.
Most importantly, I have learned who I am.
This is where life starts. Where you take a step, even when you cant see what lies before. Because that, my friends, is what grows us up. What teaches us a little bit more about life and about who we actually are. Take that undefined path and set out on an adventure, simply allow tomorrow to blow your mind.

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone" - Neale Donald Walsch

Claire (Wieringen)