Have you ever been in a position where you left everything behind? Everything you knew, owned, liked, everything that comforted you to chase your dream. Left to get out of your comfort zone as they say. Experience new things. This feeling is like no other – when you board the plane to fly to the other side of the world, knowing exactly 4 people there (but you will only see one of them face to face). But then again there’s this feeling when you quit the job that wasn’t great but was comfortable, paid bills, you knew the place inside out, it was easy. You decide to leave again, head into the unknown, chase the adventure. It’s a major part of traveling; you do meet people, form relationships – whether they are close or more distant you do need to put some trust in people. I do trust people, with a grain of salt but I do. I choose to give them the benefit of the doubt, see the best in them. I think that’s partially my problem. I choose to see what I want to see. And sometimes it comes back to bite me in the ass.
It’s crazy how the time to form quality relationships doesn’t matter. The people I spent 3 months with turned out to care about me more than the ones I spent a year with. Funny that time really doesn’t matter. I was always told that good things come with time, that you have to work for trust, friendships, love and it takes time to gain trust. I don’t really think so to be honest.
It seems that your commitment also doesn’t really matter because what plays major role is people’s ego. So what I learnt, maybe even the hard way, is that ego is a big problem for many people. The need to be liked, admired, respected, to look good in the eyes of others. People are willing to fake so many emotions just to ‘look good’. Like the Good Samaritan. They’ll do and say anything to make others believe that they are ‘good people’, helpful, caring etc. etc. when in reality they have lots of deeply rooted problems that they cannot resolve and the only way to make themselves feel better, even for a second, is approval of total strangers.
What I also learnt is, that even though people do care about you it means nothing when they don’t care about themselves. Their self destructive lifestyle, lack of positive figures in adolescent life, unresolved traumas from the past and most importantly the inability to see that there is a problem will drag you down with them. You will trust them that they will sort themselves out, because well you are there for them right? If you’re a savior like me you will stick around believing you can fix them. And you won’t because it’s not your job. But what you will do is you’ll start losing yourself, getting sucked into their whole of despair and if you don’t react fast enough you’ll find yourself in a pretty shitty position. It’s not worth it. It never will be.
I like to start things with clean slate. We can’t erase our past and should learn from it, but not everything has to be a lesson. Sometimes things just go to shit and that’s that. So leaving everything behind once again and moving on seems like the best remedy for me.
I’m all for giving second chances but not third. I said it to myself many times recently:
I don’t have all the time in the world to deal with people’s problems.
I’ll just go and do what I do best; start again. With a clean slate.
Kash On The Road 