U.F.O

When you travel around the world or go to somewhere new and exciting, your mind automatically is rolling and reeling into what you will discover and who you will be and all of the fabulous adventures you will partake in. You imagine yourself doing things you would never do, such as skydiving or swimming with sharks or chasing wild tigers on a safari. I had this in mind when I was thinking of India. I was thinking about bareback riding these beautiful, huge elephants in the middle of a lush green field. I imagined traveling down a jungle river, spotting tigers and other exotic animals. I imagined meditating on the rooftop during sunrise with a guru. So you can imagine that when I came to India and now that I’m living in Kolkata, it isn’t exactly what I pictured it to be.

I was reading in a book of mine about how to live each day and how to make each day count, yes extremely cheesy but entirely my kind of genre. Anyways, this woman was writing that so often people think that you have to live each and every day doing crazy things and making decisions you would never make, saying things you wouldn’t normally say and so on. However, she challenged those reading about a different idea. This idea she proposed went a little something like this: Instead of the previous version, why not live each day as you would usually do, but with more passion and more love and more understanding and more mercy and more beauty and more magic and more humor, etc.? I absolutely loved this idea, because being in India I kept thinking, “Oh, I need to do this and see that, because if I don’t I’ll regret it!” But the thing is, I’m living each day in India soaking things in and trying to genuinely appreciate India. Of course, I don’t always do this because I get irritated or hot or tired, but it is a constant process in my mind. I don’t feel the need to do dangerous or adventurous thing each day, but I do feel that each day should be valued and that I should improve who I am from the day before.

India has become my constant companion because it is with me every day, challenging me, astounding me, hating me and loving me all at the same time. Someone I was talking to the other day said something that truly hit me. He said, “Take in as much as you can while you’re in India, because once you step off that plane, you will never see the U.S the same way you once did.” Now, I can totally understand what he is saying, and although I haven’t experienced that yet, I can just imagine how different my perspective and outlook will be once home. India is such a blessing, and although the heat is unbearable at times and the crowd on the metro makes me wince, I would never trade it for anything else. The people in India have become so dear to me, and I will never allow myself to forget who they are. India is not one thing; there is no way that someone could use one word to describe India. India will take you by surprise, and India will show you things that you didn’t want to know about yourself, but we all need that. So I encourage everyone to find their own India. Find something or someone or some place that challenges you and astounds you, hates you and loves you all at the same time. Wait and see how surprised you will be.