New horizons

LUCKY. INSPIRED. GRATEFUL. During this last year I have traveled more than I did in the last 5 years and I have met more people than I could hope for. When I decided that you fail for sure if you don’t try, I started taking part in competitions, especially in international ones. I always loved to travel, discover new places, cultures and meet new people.
Some Europeans don’t understand how lucky we are to be able to travel just using our ID card, no passport, in other EU countries. I believe in borders just when talking about two aspects: corruption and culture. While corruption must be kept an eye on, culture must remain a sacred thing. Globalization has opened our horizons but how globalized are we? Did we forget our own culture? I find habits and traditions being the most fascinating aspects about a country. If we would all borrow from everybody else’s habits, it will be a total mess. Because that is the beauty of a new country: seeing a different culture in a different place. Nobody wants to travel in a place where everything is common. Still, we must realize that being part of some territory doesn’t make us better or worse than other people. We are all flowers from the same garden and if prejudices exist that garden will grow weeds that it will be difficult to get rid of. They would grow so deep into ourselves that it would affect the next generation and soon there would be no flowers, because they would be suffocated from all the weeds surrounding them.
Stereotypes are not part of human nature. They are taught. You will never see an African American child being rejected by an Aryan one just because of his skin color. You will not see a Catholic little girl being rejected by a Muslim little boy, that of course in a context where they would be allowed to be free and interact. Society tends to emphasize the bad aspects of humanity and we should do the vice-versa. We should stop talking so much about bad aspects (if they are not of national importance, I am not talking about wars or economic crisis here) and promote the good aspects of life and the good in people.
With Erasmus I managed to work in UK and study in France. It was challenging living in UK for 3 months, mostly because I have never been away from home for such a long period of time and of course I was afraid of the stereotypes. But I saw that the only limits in your life are the ones you make. That is why in my first week of living in Paignton, when I discovered by accident that a craft store was left unlocked and I called the owners, I missed mentioning my nationality. They invited me to their store the next day to thank me and when I was talking about myself I would keep saying “my country” instead of Romania. In my mind, I was afraid that they would think that I stole something. But it was absurd. They had cameras, they knew I did exactly the opposite. When the 3 months passed I felt ashamed of feeling the need to hide that I am Romanian and I came back to that craft store to say goodbye and give them Romanian chocolates, so that they know exactly who I am and where I came from. Because that is the problem. Bad people don’t care about their nationality or how their acts may affect foreigner’s behavior. But the good ones, because they are afraid of other’s opinion, they get lost in this big sea of cultures and “forget” to mention their nationality. And that is why stereotypes appear. Because people see just the weeds, while the flowers are afraid of being too fragile and hide in the shadow.
Although I have been involved in some international Summits, in France it was the first time when I got to hang out and study with such a variety of cultures for a long period of time. I realized how easy it is to jump to conclusions just because of somebody’s behavior. But as long as tolerance exists, we can all coexist together. You don’t even need to understand other’s habits. You just need to accept the fact that we are all different and that is what makes us fascinating. More than that, if we step back from judging other people, if we allow ourselves to prove evolution exists and we are not primitive and if we find a way to work together, we will end up seeing that we can do so much many things than we would do by ourselves. I have never been more inspired than I was while I was working in a team of different nationalities. You are more creative, you are easily surprised because others may have a totally different approach and you grow more and more. My stay in France came after the UK experience so when we had the opportunity to represent Romania at my University’s International Day I didn’t think twice and we ended up winning the Diversity prize, which made me very happy because that it was all about. I got to see wonderful stands from students from other countries, showing their traditions, food and dances in their best way and it is an experience I will never forget. We were all a big family and the term “Mercreditos” was invented because of a Mexican’s habit called “Miercolitos” where girls and women go on Wednesdays out for a drink or just hang out. We had our many Wednesdays together and we didn’t feel in any way the concept of borders, at least not until everybody came back to their country and started to miss each other.
Nothing great ever came easy, but if we realize that one person actually counts, that you are not too small to make a difference and that the others are not our enemies but our friends, we will soon learn the benefits of it. If you feel uncomfortable, try to fight it. Try to fight what society or somebody else’s taught you. Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. Don’t limit your challenges, but challenge you limits and you will end up a free person. As Bruce Lee once said: “If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them”. That is how you will end up feeling LUCKY, INSPIRED and GRATEFUL.