What traveling from one home to another has taught me.
It’s difficult to detach yourself from the places or people you’ve associated yourself with throughout your childhood, as these are essentially the building blocks to who you are to become and what influences you to make certain choices. For many of us, the friends we’ve made in our childhood or the places we’ve visited make a lasting impact affecting our personalities, desired careers, or even places we would want to settle in. We become accustomed to the people around us and that reflects who we are as a person.
I’ve been lucky enough to experience multitudes of personalities and exposure to all kinds of environments where I wasn’t always comfortable being in but nevertheless healthy for my journey. From the age of five, I traveled across the world to study abroad and then made constant switches between countries. Born in the Philippines then moving to America, then back and forth between the two never staying in the same city as before. It almost felt like I was in a portable home that kept moving every year or so. Until I moved into an actual portable home when I made my permanent move to the states.
1. Perspective is in the finer details
It was in this portable home I began to understand the concept of perspective. Of course, for a fourteen-year-old boy, the last place you’d want to live is in a mobile home with confined spaces and limited appliances, on top of living with three other people, so living there was hard and it was a difficult transition considering I’ve had so much freedom when it came to moving from home to home.
One night I lay in one of the three beds that were included in the mobile home. I was in one of the two bunk beds which left the last being a twin-sized bed. Staring at the ceiling, sleepless, I thought of the position I was in and how it affected me personally. I began listing all the negative connotations that living in a situation like this entailed. Friends would think I’m poor. Can’t have my own privacy. I felt like I was trapped in a two by four cage. These thoughts rushed through my head and I couldn’t seem to forget about them.
I took a minute to let those negative connotations sink in and I began wondering about the positives. I give myself a second to think and I couldn’t really come up with any since all these negative thoughts were filling my head but I do realize my perspective of it. The shoes I’ve been living in have always been mine so I gave them up for a second and allowed someone else to step in my shoes. How would someone in a far worse situation than me feel if given a home like this?
This mobile home wasn’t a dead-end for my family but rather a beginning, and that’s one more beginning than another family has. I began thinking to myself how much other families would work just to be able to have an opportunity like mine.
2. Flexibility is underrated.
When you bend and break, it isn’t you that’s being destroyed but rather the chains that weigh you down that are being broken.
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” -Albert Einstein
Meeting new people and finding a home in all sorts of places doesn’t give you any sense of ease until you’ve learned to adapt to your surroundings. It took about half a year to comprehend that I’ve actually moved away from my family and friends any time I migrate back and forth countries. It took even longer to open up to friends about who I was as a person. Not the things that make me laugh or what cartoons I watch but the questions I’m afraid to answer myself.
By the time I reached high school, the friends I made up until that point have all known me differently either by the way I talk or the way I act. Not a single one of them understanding who I really was and what I truly thought of the world or even what I thought of them. None of them were bad friends or the least bit ungrateful but I’ve learned that honesty is hurtful and opinions can sting, so I’ve shaped the way I act the slightest degree accordingly to interact with the people around me so far as to not hurt them or damage my reputation with them. In doing so, I’ve made friends wherever I went. Sure, this can seem like I’m putting up a mask to hide my true thoughts but I’ve never said I saw them as bad people but rather I saw myself as temporary, and why would anyone keep something temporary.
By shaping who others thought I was I let myself be flexible in return. Never stuck to a solid foundation and always cautious of the next time the ground would crumble under my feet. This let me escape situations I’d rather not be in or ease my way in instances that proved beneficial to me.
3. Be kind, pain isn’t obvious when you don’t look for it.
Befriending all sorts of people doesn’t come without baggage and skeletons. Some of my closest friends through my time in middle school and highschool harbored however many sorts of painful experiences and rigid loops. Most of them were comfortable enough to talk about them with me and others not so much. Sometimes, pain can hurt so much it numbs you to the point you forget about your other emotions.
Wherever I went, I’ve seen the pain of my friends. Some still hurting and others recovering but pain meant the same all around. It can be in their cautious voices, minuscule actions, or even their doubtful expressions.
You notice these finer grains of detail when you do these things yourself and luckily for me, I’ve dealt with pain more than enough times to understand that whenever someone around me is hurting, you let them breathe. Once they’ve had their breath, you can cushion them from their problems, letting them feel relief. Not everyone will want this though, as you can neglect your part, they can neglect theirs. When this happens you give them some more room to breathe and do your best to cushion some more. After all, that’s all we can do, cushion each other as much as we can from hitting rock bottom.
