I moved to Munich at the beginning of the year and it has been overwhelming.
The sheer excitement of taking the initiative to uproot your life from a beloved home to an unknown place is unmatched. The fear engulfs you at every step of the way and every decision seems to be life altering. The courage lies in balancing the excitement with the fear.
I enjoyed the fear and anxiety part of the process. The logistics was the bane of my decision making.
The problem is the process and the solution is the complications of the next steps
For an Indian already living away from home as an immigrant, to make the decision to move from one end of the world to another is a complicated process. The solution or the outcome of that process is a list of complicated action items that are going to raise complicated set of questions.
The rush to close one chapter only to open another with its own set of uncertainties is layered with bureaucratic nightmares.
The Rollercoaster of emotions like a boat stuck in high seas
Through the numbing bureaucratic process, a small matter of handling the emotions is always sidelined and almost taken for granted. As always the matter of emotions is last on the list and to my defence, it is an area which I am yet to master. The best solution yet for me has been just to brush it under the rugs.
This matter always resurfaces at the most inconvenient of the moments. Better to tackle it head-on.
The satisfaction of reveling in the final outcome of the decisions
The endgame, the moment of truth, the finish line, however we term it is not the day of recognition but the day of realization. When it is time to relax and sail through the sunny waters, the realization hits and there comes a time to experience the flood of emotions from the arduous process of moving from one alien country to another. The satisfaction wrapped in a glittering package of anxiety.
At the end of it all, the choices come back to gently tap my shoulder as a reminder.
The choices are tough and not the popular ones, but to look back towards the end of it all, the legwork it takes to make it happen is the true reward.
Not the outcome.