A new beginning

It is difficult to move, to leave everything and to start afresh. It is painful to uproot when one becomes so attached to familiar surroundings. The fear of the unknown heightens the senses and obfuscates. Our myopic outlook makes the future a constraint to emotional happiness and quells the desire for adventure. But this is exactly why it is necessary to shake things up, especially if one has been swallowed up into a whole of complacency.

It is has been such a long time since I have been forced to re-evaluate my life. Introspection is part of everyday routine, but doing introspection thoroughly and deeply comes only upon rare occasions. The way I am dealing with leaving South Africa for the US has been interesting and challenging. The comfort of a good job, house, family and friends makes life bearable. Life finds a completely new meaning when one takes all that away. It is not so much as leaving things behind that causes anxiety, but it is the fear of the unknown. 

Unfortunately there is no certainty regarding the future, no matter what steps we take to minimize it. Forecast errors grow in proportion to the forecast horizon. Even occurrences occur at random with a given probability and there is just no taking control of it. Moving to a different country adds to the number of already uncountable factors that drive uncertainty.

There are three ways to deal with this uncertainty – you have to or else it will destroy your nervous system:
• Be oblivious about the uncertainty you are facing. This can be justified on grounds that many outcomes are probability events of which you have no control over.
• Fool yourself into thinking that you have control. List the things that causes anxiety and create a plan to address them (your plans might fail which will ultimately force you to accept the first bullet). Thinking you are in control has the psychological advantage of taking away your predicament. While it does nothing to reduce the uncertainty, it does a great deal to reduce anxiety – only because you think you are able to minimize uncertainty.
• Embrace uncertainty and see it as an adventure (I prefer this one). Since uncertainty represent chance events, it makes the future much more interesting and invokes the “anything can happen” principle. Do things that you always wanted to do (make a plan if you don’t have cash lying around to live as a vicarious spendthrift) and maximize every opportunity.

Evaluate your decisions. I am moving because I love my wife and want to share in her great adventure (she has definitely done the same for me once). But, I am also moving because my life has reached a stationary point – complacency is a slow killer.

Change is only stressful because of our attachment to things; Things that have a finite stamp and ideas that do not really matter (such as a job giving a person power and status). In fact, it makes us less human and more like robots that fulfill silly functions every day. We neglect the spirit too often by making foolish decisions and we starve the spirit of nutritious food. No bloody wonder that man is anxious about everything temporal and material – because those are the things we choose to consume and be consumed by.

Thus, while I might forgo a cushy job, a good salary, a comfortable house and leave some friends behind, I gain something that I have been yearning for. I regain a piece of myself that got lost amidst all the heaps of rubbish that I accumulated over the years. And now that I am free, free from the material, I finally breathe again. How wonderful it is to not suffocate under pretence and lies! This is a fresh start. I hope I do not forget this lesson.