How many of you did not find any difficulty at all in adjusting yourself during transition period? The transition can be in regards of not only to relocation, but also changes of matters or people surrounding us that create some difference to us. Few weeks ago I was heading back from my vacation from home. On the same day, I sent my little sis off right in front the airport departure gate for her next phase of life - her college life. Since then I’ve been constantly checking on her to see how she’s doing in a new environment surrounded by strangers and more strangers. She’s still adjusting but she’s more of being paranoid and feeling extremely worry since her arrival in adapting to new life and coping with the heavy school load.
Talking to her often makes me looking at myself. She’s going through the same path as I did 9 years ago. Yes, I was worried about being in a new environment. I was so spoilt and inexperienced that I didn’t even know how to fry an egg or been on a public transport on my own before. Then with the whole new education system thrown to me. I was just like a newborn acquiring basic living skill from scretch. On top of that all students are expected to be independent and do well in order to pick whatever course fhey wanted to do at college. This idea was a little too much to me initially. I was totally spoilt and needed my family to constantly push me to finish my school work while I was at home. The freedom I was suddenly given could have made me gone wild a little. Anyhow, I was fortunate enough that it really didn’t take me too long to get used to the new surrounding and stuff like that. And the freedom was a great gift to me because I took the chance to learn and experience new stuff yet at the same time stayed pretty disciplined.
I think we all, you and I, have this innate skill in adaptation to whatever form of changes. It is just that most of the time, we don’t realize this. We tend to focus on BIG and OBVIOUS matters. For example, when we relocate from City A to City B (or Country A to Country B), we will start comparing the differences of those two places ie living style, language, people, economic situation… But if we give it a thought, we’ll find that in our daily mundane life, there is already plenty of changes happening. For instance, we’ll only focus on the fact that we’re relocating and moving elsewhere, we have never really realized that we have a new neighbor now, a new change in our neighborhood. We just find ourselves putting a lot of effort in adjusting to our new job or complain about the routine work we are doing. True, some jobs are pretty repeatable and boring; however we’re actually experiencing something new or making some sort of new acquaintance work-related. You need not change a new job all the time to have new experiences. And neither is the new job some type of scary monster.
Every major and minor example just proves that things are changing all the time. But the fact is we are not so aware of these changes and we’re gradually adjusting ourselves. It’s just like a thermostat. Once the temperature goes up to 1 degree, it’ll somehow cool down and let it adjusted back to the programmed temperature point. We are, however, will only feel and notice big differences. Then all of a sudden we feel the freakish cold temperature and shiver and hurrying to put on a jacket to keep ourselves warm. It is the same thing for my little sis, she just keeps turning her sensor on and keep on being reminded about the fact that she’s now in a totally new country and away from home. However, she's not aware that her own termostat will do the job to take care of the adjustment.
Looking at my little sis, I am not too worried about her current fear and worries. I know she’s a better survivor than me. She has gathered a lot of experiences from her other siblings. And the best part is she’s very determined and strong. Yeah, she’s a lot smarter than me, hah. She just needs some time to adjust herself to the new changes. Hopefully she will not continue letting the fact that it’s a different place to fear her more. She just needs to convince herself that, everything is new but that’s the best and fun part.
Just go for it, sis! You can make it! Don’t worry, just be stupid! Don’t worry about making stupid and silly mistakes. We know that’s the way we learn best. Hakuna matata!
♥ every page of my imagination
