The Blind List

For the #TheBlindList campaign and contest (found on Indiblogger) for Lufthansa. Click on the links to find out more!

The world is a vast place.

That one sentence sums up one of the earliest anxieties that I can remember. That one sentence used to make me take a step back to calm myself down. That one sentence? Quite possibly stopped me from having many amazing experiences, somewhere over the duration of my 23-year-old life.

I am the person who has always taken some time (moments, minutes, hours, days and sadly, even months) to become comfortable in a new place, just to let myself open up to the world.  I was the person who is on the sidelines in a new place, as she tries to figure out, which version of herself should she first display for the world to see (to judge, to laugh, to comment or to sadly, even ignore). Essentially, I am the person who is shy to new experiences, just because she does not know what exactly she is going to encounter and how she would react to it.

However, I’m happy to report that (mostly) all of that has changed.

The world is a vast place.

Moving out of my parents’ house, moving away from the city that was my whole world for 20 years, moving to a city with an established record of crowds and violence and incidents, did the job for me. Moving to the “City of Dreams” after 2 years, but now with some life experience under my wings, and also finally joining the corporate workforce with all of the newfound work anxieties; yes, that took care of the old ones! All the way, I was always fortunate enough to find my “kindred spirits”; people who became my support systems and lifelines and shoulders to cry on, and basically helped me get better acquainted with myself.

But somewhere along the way, I have become too complacent.

While I can definitely say that I feel more comfortable in my own skin than ever before, I also feel too comfortable. While I do feel more confident and self-aware than ever before, I also do feel that I am not challenging enough. While I do feel the old anxiety slowly melt away, I do feel the hidden weight of it gently nudge me as a reminder. While I do laugh and socialize and go out and explore, I also do not do that in unfamiliar terrain anymore. And therein lies my need for self exploration.

What I do without a second thought now would earlier amount to crippling amounts of anxiety and shyness from me. I cannot lie and say that all of it has truly vanished. There is still quite a ways to go, there is still much to do in terms of exploration, there is often enough shying away to make me feel like I am back at step one. The way I see it, the only solution is to do what has worked before. Step out of my home and my hearth, meet the beautiful people this world has to offer, explore the often overlooked and forgotten corners of the world, delve into new enriching experiences and fall in love with the world more vibrantly than before.

The world is a vast place.

So what is my bucket list, you may ask, after all of that (excessive?) rambling. Where would I blindly go, without any forethought or planning or anything else which would let the old anxieties take over?

As I sip my tea next to my living room window which offers the tiniest glimpse of the dirtiest beach, I wonder how it would feel to do that on the pristine white sands and the heavenly blue waters of the Maldives.

While I work on the balcony of my top-floor office which overlooks the millions of blinking and twinkling lights of this city that I feel at home in, I wonder would it be just as liberating to smile into the skyline of Manhattan or Singapore or even of Panama City.

While I actively (and gleefully) engage in the bustling nightlife of this city, I often wonder if I would just as easily delve into the nightlife of another bustling metro (Ibiza? Berlin? Or just the cliché of NYC?) and without the comforting presence of the known.

When I walk through the cobbled and (mostly) leafy streets of Mumbai, learning about the escapades of the old and the new, the natives and the colonials, I cannot help but reflect how I would take in all the information of the streets of Florence or Edinburgh or anywhere else Google can recommend for me.

Driving through the freshly washed, vibrantly green, softly rolling hills of the Western Ghats always leaves me feeling refreshed, but I do think if I would feel just as at peace as I drive down the Painted Desert with the car top down.

As I chat and laugh and swap stories and retrospect and socialize (network?) with now-familiar people, my mind often poses the question if I can do the same with random strangers I meet as I backpack my way through the Andes.

Would I truly be my openminded best and take in all of these (and more) experiences and learn from them, or would my old fears rise and beat me down?

I do not know, but I do know that I am very willing to find out.

The world is a vast place.

But maybe, just maybe, saying yes to it and wandering in it, and getting lost in, might just make me (re)discover myself.

 

#TheBlindList #SayYesToTheWorld