Is It Worth It?
Five years of festivals alone, birthdays in silence, and the small things that kept me going
Five years ago on this date, I left.
Not dramatically. No grand speech, no clear vision of what was ahead. I just picked up my bags, said goodbye to the people I love, and walked up the staircase of an international airport carrying everything I felt hope, fear, uncertainty, courage, excitement all tangled together, none of them winning.
I didn’t know what the new life would look like. I hadn’t anticipated how it would treat me. I just knew I was leaving.
I hadn’t expected luxury. I didn’t have high hopes or big dreams. Just normal ones the kind most people have and rarely say out loud.
A simple life. A decent family. A tiny house to live in. Coffee on the terrace in the morning. Sleeping under the summer sun. A small corner to meditate. A little bookshelf. A room where friends could gather for life’s quiet, precious moments.
That was it. That was the whole dream.
5 years later, that dream is still not here. What does that actually feel like?
It makes you question everything, sometimes in the middle of the night after a terrifying dream, sometimes in the middle of the day when you’re failing at work, sometimes at dawn while taking the metro back home, staring at nothing.
Am I doing the right thing? Am I being too selfish about my career? I have one life, is it worth staying away from the people I love? Will they still be there in a year? Will I be happy a few years from now?
Is it worth crying alone during festivals? Is it worth celebrating your birthday feeling hollow the entire day? Is it worth walking alone through the hardest moments when all you needed was someone to just hold you?
These questions rise up, sit heavy on top of everything and then quietly disappear. Not because you found the answer. Because a new problem arrives and takes their place. What to prepare for tomorrow’s meeting. What to wear. Where to eat.
The biggest questions of your life, swallowed by the smallest ones.
I haven’t found the answer yet.
But then one phone call from your mom. Asking whether you woke up. Whether you ate on time. Whether something is bothering you at work. Whether you went to the office or stayed home. She doesn’t ask about your ambitions or your five year plan. She just wants to know if you’re okay today.
A text from your girlfriend asking how your day was. Telling you everything will be alright.
A message from your sister saying you were built for something bigger than this moment of doubt. That she believes in you even when you don’t.
Your little nephew asking when you’re coming back waiting for you with his remote control aeroplane, his remote control superman.
A stranger waving at you during your lunch run. Nothing more than that.
These small things. These tiny, ordinary, almost invisible things, they pull you back. They remind you that you are breathing. That you are alive. That even across the distance, even through a screen, even in a wave from a stranger, there are people who hold you. Quietly. Without making a big thing of it.
That is what kept me here.
Maybe the simple life you dreamed of, the terrace, the coffee, the tiny house maybe that’s still coming. Or maybe you’re already living something you didn’t know how to dream about back then. Not the life you painted. But a life that is teaching you to paint differently.
Five years ago, I walked up that staircase carrying hope, fear, uncertainty, courage, and excitement. All at once. I didn’t know which one would win.
I still don’t have the terrace. I still don’t have the tiny house, the bookshelf in my own corner, friends around my table on a quiet evening. The simple life I dreamed of is the one that wasn’t even ambitious & is still somewhere ahead of me.
But I’ve stopped waiting for life to get calm before I start living it. That calm is not coming. I know that now. There will always be another question at 2am, another festival spent alone, another birthday that passes quietly in a city that doesn’t know your name.
What I have instead is a mom who calls to check if I ate. A sister who believes in me on the days I don’t. A little niece waiting with a remote control aeroplane. Small things. Ordinary things. Things I didn’t think to paint on the canvas five years ago because I didn’t know yet how much they would matter.
Maybe that’s the life. Not the one you planned. Not the one you dreamed standing at the bottom of that staircase. But the one that quietly builds itself around you while you’re busy asking if it’s worth it.
I walked up that staircase alone, carrying everything I hoped for.
Five years later, I’m still walking. And somehow, that is enough.