The Need to Prove Yourself

Up until the age of 19-20, I’ve felt that I followed a fairly conventional path in life. I did what I was expected to do and did not have any plans to deviate from it. Then when I turned 21, I’ve gone on my first major overseas trip. It was 3 weeks in South America. The trip itself was very enjoyable, but more than that – when I came back, something changed within me.

There were two discoveries that I’ve made during that trip that influenced many of my choices that followed:

The first discovery was that the world is a much smaller place than we make it out to be. Through lack of knowledge, incorrect facts that come from our friends and families, and general fear of the unknown, we divide the world in two zones – safe and off-limit. The safe one is Europe, vacation resorts, places we hear a lot about. Unsafe is everything that sounds exotic and far – Africa, South America, Asia. It’s a silly preconception and going to one of the “off-limit” countries for the first time quickly proved that the world and the people, no matter how far away, are not as different as we make them out to be.

The next discovery – even bigger in magnitude and impact – was the fact that it was actually possible for me to go and spend 3 weeks in South America. Me – the person that has never really traveled far and on my own; the person that typically stayed within the boundaries of reasonable and what was expected. It was mind-boggling to start thinking about the possibilities. Possibilities in terms of travel and all the countries that previously only captured the imagination, but suddenly started to seem attainable. But it could even been taken beyond travel – possibilities in terms of life options and things that I could do. What if all those things that we often talk about, but never actually act upon, were possible and attainable.

Since then, there started growing a drive to push the boundaries of life in as many directions as possible. Whether learning how to operate a new mode of transportation, starting a business that you know nothing about, or picking up and moving to volunteer in a different country for a while – all of this was driven in part by the inherent value of the activity, but also to simply prove to yourself that you can actually do it. That there is nothing impossible about it and nothing that you can’t handle.

If our reality is part the circumstances of the world around us; and part of what we create it out to be, why not create a reality where everything is attainable – that is if you really want it and work to get it.