Testing 100% responsibility

Moving to a foreign country, even if it's just temporarily, exposes a truth that often gets swept under the rug of daily life: nothing will happen if you don't act. Sometimes that's a good thing. Right now I am enjoying the quietness of my new living room after having read a few South African magazines. I like hearing just the fridge and no TV and although I found it disconcerting at first I can also deal with not having an internet connection that will let me embark on mindless surfing. In this quietness, which just now got interrupted by the frantic barking of at least three dogs, I realize that hardly anything will happen in the next few days and weeks if I don't set it up. At home I pretty much just go where I'm summoned to and I don't have to make an effort to meet people or to get tasks presented to me. Here in Cape Town an estimated number of five people know my name, three of them are my former neighbours. If I want to return home changed and enriched nobody else will do the work for me. I have to find groups to hang out with, figure out how to get around town, show up and get the conversation going. I have to find a way to fill each day in a meaningful way. If I return home without having made any friends, having learned anything new and generally matured in some way or the other there's nobody else to blame. Many people have wondered what I'd do with my time. Somehow the concept of moving to a different place and staying there without rushing around the entire country is novel to most people or at least those who quizzed me. Apart from my need to relax and hopefully enjoy a second summer I came here and decided against a lot of conventional ideas because I realized that making each day count, pursuing passions and interests is a skill which requires practice. If I want to have any hope of designing my life meaningfully I better get cracking at doing just that. Once it's internalized and I'm skilled I hope that I can return to my regular life and combine the best of these two lifestyles. Am I lucky to have this opportunity? Definitely. Can everybody just leave like I did? Probably not (though interestingly quite a few who think they can't earn about the same amount or more than I do and no, not all of them have kids). But everybody can make the following choice: to excuse and feel bad or to do something, anything that leads to exploring one's own place in this world. As a wise mum once said: there are always going to be idiots who earn more and people who are way smarter or work much harder than you do who earn less or have a crappier life. Everyone has to figure out what to do about it. Every minute we don't fret about this is a minute we can invest in envisioning and then actualizing our meaningful life.