Must have

Excess Mental Baggage. Photo by Manoj Jadhav.

I must have my own apartment. I must have a car. I must have coffee in the morning. I must have at least a dozen shirts. I must have total silence at night. I must not have a TV.

Before I embarked on my journey to the Americas, I’d had this fear that I wouldn’t be able to adapt. I feared that my quirky habits and peculiar preferences have become such an essential part of my being that I wouldn’t be able to give them up. I thought I was facing an incredibly difficult transition.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I’m sharing an apartment. I have no car. There is no coffee most of the time. I only have 3 shirts. My flatmates are noisy. There is a TV set.

And I couldn’t care less. In fact, I love it.

I can’t explain why, but the things I thought would bother me, don’t. I guess it’s partly because my mind is too busy taking in all the new information and can’t deal with worrying about old habits. It feels like not only did I leave my physical stuff behind, but any mental baggage I had also stayed on the old continent.

As long as there is fresh air, water, food, shelter, good people and wifi, I’ll be fine. I know that now. And it’s an incredibly liberating notion.

I used to think I had to acquire stuff and ideas to be free.

The truth is I had to get rid of them.