“Actually the mistake of my lifetime was not being true to myself and doing was what I felt I was meant to do. I feel I’ve wasted my whole life. 87 years have gone by in a flash. The days will slip into weeks, the weeks into months and the months into years. You look pretty young now, but watch out – You’ll look like me before you know it. Life is like that. So live the life that you are meant to live. Your life is far too important to wait until you are just about to die to wake up. I lived my mother’s life when I should have had the wisdom to live my own”. – Robin Sharma
When I first took my flight, at 17, all the way over the Atlantic ocean to reach those three huge letters at the airport “LAX”, Los Angeles, I wouldn’t have expected to be in Colombo, Sri Lanka at 26.
It’s a matter of feelings: though I was pretty young at that time, I felt straight away that it was not just a place, but THE place to be. It was like I was connected to my body and soul, it was all there, everything I wanted, I need, all the happiness I felt there I never felt anywhere else in the world, not even in Italy. It’s the kind of thing where your heart just knows it all, he knows where you belong to.
After I left LA to go back to Italy I kept studying, working and make money, doing my exams on time (or even before the time): I achieved everything as I had just one goal in my life: go back to the States. So I did. I went to San Francisco and do my master there. But life sometimes doesn’t follow the plans; it was very difficult to find a corporate job there being not an American. After the degree, the company I was working for, tried very hard to hire me, but, unfortunately it was a small one, and laws in USA are pretty much strict: they go in favor of Americans first, as it should be in every country I would say, in order to keep their talented young people.
So the saddest day of my life arrived: I had to leave the US and go back to Italy. I was not planning to stay in Italy and that’s why I accepted the prize I won at the University in Rome: it was a Teaching Internship experience to do in China for 4 months. Not that I disliked it, but it was not my dream. Anyway, I accepted that job cause I was ready to go to Australia after that.
What did I say before? Things don’t work with a plan in life.
So true. I didn’t reach Australia yet.
After those 4 months in China, I had the chance to know more people, out of my company and got the opportunity to work for a real multinational company there. Delighted, afraid, but excited I did accept the job, ending up staying in China for a total of 2 years and a half, travelling to Europe and South America as business trips.
I couldn’t ask for more. Except one thing, settling somewhere.
I didn’t want to settle in China, though I was having a great experience, China was not meant to be the place for a young foreign girl like me. Somehow I knew it was not the place, that’s why I asked to leave.
It seems so funny that at first the only thing you wanna do is travelling around the world for working, each month in a different country, with different culture, negotiating and dealing with various minds and business people. It’s all a dream at first! Then I realized I was not having a proper life: yes I was making lots of friends, I was growing, learning twice as fast, but each time it was like starting from zero again.. and it’s tiring, even if exciting! But emotionally tiring.
When I accepted a new job in Europe, they sent me to Sri Lanka for my first project and here I am now. Can’t stop travelling. You get addicted, the more you travel the more you are hungry to discover and learn more and more. My mom still tells me to come back and work in Italy, or close to it. I simply can’t. That’s not my working and lifestyle anymore: sad to say it, but I don’t feel I belong to what is Italy nowadays, except my love for the food and the Italian history.
I want to get things done, in the fastest way as possible. My impatience is my week point here, I strive to do things as good and fast as I can, to keep myself active, work and private life wise.
“We only live once”. That’s my motto.
Though I know that I hurt my family doing this, I can’t help to satisfy their desires for myself. Everyone has their own life, and we should all live a life that we won’t regret in the future, making our own choices, our own decisions, right or wrong, it doesn’t matter. It’s always a life lesson and if we feel lonely at some point, we will be always on time to come back home. The door will always be opened. And I’m lucky to have at least one parent to remind me that.
So yes, I still left my heart in the city of Angels, but I guess I’ll just keep going with the flow. And one day I might go and reunite mind, heart and soul.
Fingers crossed. =)
feddysworld 