A Catch Up + Thoughts I’ve Had

Hi there again!

Once more, it’s been a good minute since I last wrote on here. It’s finals season, and as I’ve been complaining to my friends, something about the Bologna education system feels off to me: it feels like finals season has been going on for ages (and it won’t be ending at least until the end of the month either; grades will take even longer to show up). So, I’ve been studying and studying. And between all that studying, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.

Here’s a randomised list of some recurring thoughts I’ve been meaning to share (and three unrelated Berlin pictures with mini questions I’ve been asking myself):

1. I love my family.

The closer I get to my travel date to Kosovo, the more I realise how excited I am to be home. I really love and miss my family. I’ve been reliving a lot of the happy memories we made together and I’ve been thinking a lot about how much of myself is actually a byproduct of them. Are we really individuals, or are we cocktails of the things we learn from and live through with our families?

Jenn Im in a recent video shared the positive and negative things she learned from her parents, which I found very inspirational. To keep with the positive theme of the blog, I’ve been reflecting on the positive things I’ve learned from them throughout the years as well – and it’s been a very joyous process: From my mom, I learned about kindness, unconditional love and sacrifice, as she always puts us first; From my dad, I learned about resilience, how to see an opportunity in every challenge, and how to trust that I can always achieve the things I set my mind to; From my brother, I learned about patience, bravery and how to be a reliable rock in other people’s lives. And from all of them together, I learned that there’s nothing a good joke can’t make better. I wouldn’t have it any other way 💕😭

2. I love my formative high school experience.

In one particular exam I had this season, I was startled to find some unexpected calculations as part of the assessment. Naturally, as any person (idiot) with a high school diploma would, I relied on my sweet but sturdy fundamental math skills to wiggle my way out of that pickle. Some of the teachers we had there, really left a permanent mark on me, including my math teachers! I’ve been thinking a lot of the foundations my high school gave me and about the many sayings they said to us during those years. While they maybe didn’t make so much sense then, they have still stuck with me and they make a lot of sense now.

One such foundational element was their focus on integrity being a part of everything we do. Another foundational element was again, this idea of sacrifice and building something from the ground up. Many of the teachers had left their comfortable lives in the United States to make the bare minimum teaching children in Kosovo (another YouTuber I follow, Beth LeManach recently shared a video of her beautiful garden; turns out it wasn’t beautiful when she bought it, but she slowly nurtured it into a beautiful lush space! It’s not what we are dealt with, it’s what we make of it!). Lastly, there was this quote that was hanging in our class rooms and that our gym teacher really talked to us at lengths about: Life is 5% what happens to you, and 95% your attitude to it. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. It’s so easy to feel “out of control” nowadays, but maybe sometimes it’s worth reminding ourselves that actually, 95% of it (our attitude) is in our control 🙂

3. The short – and the long – run

Ah the ultimate dichotomy in economics. I’m in that head space again where I don’t want to buy anything because I just think “what’s the point! I will move soon anyways and I can’t carry everything with me, wherever I go!”. And the more I reflect on this, the more I even think that life is so short, what’s the point in buying into (pun intended?) all this consumerism in the first place? Say, laser hair removal. It’s so costly, and so time consuming, by the time you’re done with it and can properly reap the benefits of it, you’ll be …. to quote Keynes … dead. Dreary, I know!

But in a less dreary sense, I guess what I mean to say is, life is short, so we should enjoy it! But not so much, so that it loses all meaning, because we won’t live forever. If that sounds contradicting, … what I mean to say is, maybe the point in our short life is to find something to live for that is larger than us – growth, progress, community… With the grand picture in mind, the small thing start to matter less 🙂

What have you been thinking and over thinking about lately?

Let me know & hugs!

Rrita