This is not real life
Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person I am.
What do parents want for their child? They want him to go to a good school, take private art oriented classes, join a highly ranked university, finish studies and immediately have a well paid job. Somewhere along the way, love should appear and by combining the 2 paths you will find yourself in front of the perfect adult. Great career, good family.
It’s a good plan but we all know real life proves to be a bit different. There is this particular moment in some random Sunday morning when you blink at the sealing and ask yourself… what do I really want to do with my life? There are so many answers to this question… a few months ago, my answer was EVS.
I can tell you one thing: Evs is not real life. Being a volunteer here is like a 9 months dream where you kind of know that you are dreaming so you can subconsciously take control of your dream and guide it towards whatever you want it to be. Sometimes you have these flashbacks of reality but you try to keep them in a hidden corner of your brain. You are “Here”, you are “Now”… in your dream.
You live in this flat with 3 people from different countries. You are a piece of this crazy puzzle. You sometimes wonder if there is someone else out there who would have played your part better than you do. It doesn’t really matter actually… You take as much as they give…you give as much as they can understand. There are these moments when you feel mute and deaf and the only thing that brings you closer to the people around you is your special power of being as human as they are.
I learned that some people choose to be vegetarians, others were constrained by religion and culture to eat or not eat certain things, and, some others eat meat on a daily basis. Who is right? There is no such thing as long as you can stand together at the same table, pass the bread from one corner to the other, smile and tell a funny story about the day that just went by.
I learned that if you are a rock chick in Germany than you more or less listen to the same music as this rock winnabe adolescent in Romania. If you enjoy punk in Poland you will most definitely find some Turkish people who will love to shake their head on Sex Pistols together with you. First of all, you are human… secondly, you are person of this world…no matter the country you come from.
I found out that it doesn’t matter what your mother tongue is as long as you find a way to finish each other’s sentences. You just have to look into the eyes of the person in front of you and see that crazy unique connection that two people sometimes have. And then you ask yourself …”did he/she go that far into my head that he/she can now hear my thoughts?” But you enjoy it too much to care about the answer.
Around here it happens a lot to be stuck in a moment…But not in a bad way. You go for a beer, you eat together, you run in the Polish rain or you are waiting for this late night bus while talking about “small” things… Moments passing by. Some are so intense that make your knees tremble. You want time to stop for a little while so that you can understand better what is happening to you. And you dream… If I stop time right now, maybe I can keep this better version of myself… if I let time go by… maybe I will forget…\
Today, for 2 hours, I went back to high school. But this time it wasn’t that horrifying. This time I was the cool foreigner that everyone wanted to meet. Pfff… I wish I had the same success in past real high school life.
My mind is like a photo camera and I’m taking pictures with it. I take big breaths and I wish I could immortalize the smell of this particular moment. Shaking someone’s hand is an addiction of my hands. My skin changes its structure with every new person I meet. This morning I looked into the mirror and I actually noticed that my hair is longer. When did that happen? Are you transforming me or am I transforming you right now?
Falling in love with people all over the place:
She is this pretty curly skinny Czech girl who tells fascinating stories about life. I want to be just like her when I grow up.
He is this Spanish nice character who always sais things you wouldn’t expect. Look at him and you will take him for granted – talk to him and you will fall in love with his mind.
S. is so loud that you will hate her in the first 5 minutes. Afterwards you will just feel her warmth and be fascinated by her sincere natural thoughts. Really hope to see her again.
She has an attitude. She thinks she is so special that you hate her. But you know she will grow up some day and learn to be humble. Life will teach her to forget being arrogant and learn how not to hurt people with easy wards. I love smart asses with an attitude when they have a point. Her point will come along the way.
“People are better than no people”.
The museum was staring at me:
Today I had my first good experience with a museum. It confused my moral values. Modern art is daring me to think about the person I am not, that person who could never create the things I saw. Who created this and what are the experiences they have been trough? My mind is dared to think about the possibility of being something other than I am. No matter how much I want to think at myself as this opened minded person… I have to admit that I was angry, confused and wrinkled after the visit to the museum. Is this version of myself better that the other versions staring at me trough the items in the museum?
Today somebody told me that I make a difference. I know it sounds like a cliché but when was the last time you heard it?
by Ionela Dutu, Romania
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