It all began on a tiny Mediterranean island 12 years ago.

It’s a strange feeling being back here. In Malta.

I was 14 years old when I came to this island the first time, under the pretense of studying English for three weeks. Today, I do consider myself somewhat proficient in English, but I can say without a shadow of a doubt, that not even a morsel of the grasp I today have of the language, I picked up during those three weeks. That journey was about something different, something a lot of important than linguistic advancement. I had never really been away from home for a long period before, yet I remember how unperturbed I still felt before setting off, and more importantly, how indifferent I felt the day I came back home. I suppose that already then, somewhere in the back of my mind, ”home” had started to become something relative. But something had clicked in me. I believe it had been important for me to see with my own two eyes that facing something unknown didn’t deter me, if anything, it felt like freedom. To date it still does.

12 years later I still believe that there’s a kind of freedom to be found in what we don’t know, but today it’s a bit more perplexing. Sometimes I’m told I’d do better for myself by thinking less. Asking less. And perhaps that’s true. Then again, questions as per se are harmless, it’s the answers that’s the tricky part. There’s a kind of freedom which rests upon the ignorance and arrogance of why we don’t always live in a wonderful world. And there’s also a kind of freedom to be found in realizing that switching on the light in a dark room only blinds you momentarily before you see things more clearly. Quite literally, darkness doesn’t exist but is merely the absence of light. And even if it doesn’t always seem like it, it’s nice to think that perhaps it’s just the same with people’s minds.

It’s taken me years to understand, devour and put value in the insight that the life-changing moments are almost always only the ones where we allow ourselves to be intimate, personal and most important of them all, brave, to ourselves and to the people around us. I have visited just shy of 80 countries in the world. That as per se doesn’t make me much richer than someone who’s only visited 10 unless we’re counting passport stamps that are. 

Nevertheless, it’s taken me to a point where I’m becoming convinced that my quality of life doesn’t enhance merely by attaching a new airport code tag to my suitcase. I’m less intrigued by places today than I was before. It doesn’t give me much more of a rush to pull the curtains to Times Square, than to the dusty construction site outside my bedroom. I saw 3 new cities in 3 new countries over the last 2 months. One so modern, it’s in the Asian vanguard of LGBTQ rights. One so western, yet so conservative I barely saw a non-caucasian person on the streets. One so plagued by inflation beer was cheaper than water. It enriched me to see, feel and discover all of this. 

But the only thing that I can recall that changed me lately, was a different story entirely. A few weeks ago I met an elderly lady on one of my flights. She told me she had a fear of flying, so I sat down with her and we began to talk. She hadn’t been on aircraft since long before the internet was invented she said, but now a relative had bought her a ticket and she’d ran out of excuses, to recite her words. As the aircraft commenced the takeoff roll we held each other’s hands, and as we lifted off the grounded and ascended through the cloud barrier she leaned over me and gazed out admiringly over the only space where the sun always shines. Her jaw dropped for a second and then she looked at me and said ”So what happens now?” and I said ”Now the world awaits.” and then we hugged. Long. It was a healthy reminder that perhaps we’re not in that much of a hurry to figure everything out just yet, and whenever we do, it’s more about whom we take the leap and share that moment with. And if I can have more experiences to become a better listener, a better orator, a more humble yet more confident person, more generous and less opportunistic, that’s more valuable than any stamp.

I had a discussion with a friend of mine recently. She told me how one of her friends had pointed out to her how lucky she was to have all of these worldly experiences. The shopping on Fifth Avenue, the wilderness in South Africa, the suspicious street food in Taipei, the gelato in Rome, the modernism of Japan, the humility of Bangladesh. All of it. Her friend was right. She is blessed. I am blessed. We are blessed. But, not because of any of the aforementioned, but because I believe it to be incredibly hard to understand just how little the big things are unless you’ve stood in front of them. And how big the little things are in comparison.

a trivial thought about the fear of a life where people come and go.

To jaunt out into the world and leave your comfort zone is probably one of the most rewarding experiences you can ever give to yourself. Everyone who’s ever done it would tell you so. They would tell you that nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to that immense sensation of wanderlust and curiosity they all felt the day they set off. Because there isn’t. And they would tell you that the world is every bit as magical as you imagine it to be, and every bit as terrifying. And how there’s a dual harmony between the two that awakens an insatiable desire that can never die. An equal two-way desire of both the joy and the sadness found in this world. Because the joys are truly so many, but without the sadnesses as a constant reminder of how blessed we are, we often miss out on the opportunity to enjoy them while we can. Important.

But it comes with a price. Everything worth doing, having and experiencing often do, and far from it’s a monetary price. The thing is, in this unparalleled life constantly consisting of new acquaintances, unseen skylines, contradicting timezones, not yet savored cuisine and unexplored cultures, the person you spend the most time with is usually yourself. And that can either lift you up or completely break you down. And that is because most people are not entirely comfortable being by themselves. However, it’s the rare few who are brave enough to sit down with their loneliness, look it in the eyes, hold its hand, listen to what it has to say and allow for it stay whenever it comes to visit, that are the really fortunate ones in this world. Because they know that loneliness is not the time we spend in our own company. Far from.

People come and go into most people’s lives all the time, and that’s not a revelation of any kind. That’s just a fact. But what makes it unique for a traveler is that slowly, precariously and surely, you become so accustomed to this high flow of people that the old beaten process of getting to know someone, opening up bit by bit and taking time, is completely out the window. Because that’s just it, there is no time. And living a life where the one thing that unites most of us in it is that we’re trying to make the most of the time, we skip a few steps of the order in which things are normally done and instead go hardcore straight away. I can tell you, I’ve lost count on the occasions I’ve sat down next to someone I’ve met just moments earlier and opened up about something very personal to me, or the times when someone else has done this to me. Most of the time I don’t believe it’s about seeking for advice, it’s simply about ventilating. To prevent the things holding us down at the moment from nesting in our minds. I would describe myself as quite a private person normally, and that’s why I rely on the belief that we become adept at assessing quite quickly whom to trust, and whom not to. At the end of the day, we’re all strangers and know very little about one another. But I think it’s healthy. Not only to be reminded that all of us struggle sometimes, regardless of who we are. But, to trust.

It’s can be a privilege to be able to choose your alone time, just as it can be a torment to have it chosen for you. In this life, it’s chosen for you very often, and if you don’t know how to dispose of that time, it can be lethal. By now I don’t think there can be any more existential questions a person can ask themselves while taxiing around an airport, walking down new streets in new cities and starring into the hotel room ceilings on jet-lagged nights than I have already done. But the reward for asking questions is finding answers. And I feel like I do all the time. Asking questions is scary quite often since you don’t always obtain the answers you’re looking for. Even scarier if there’s no one by your side in those moments. That’s why I don’t believe this life would work unless you know that you have your safety net, a phone call or a flight away. And that’s enough. For me, right now and right here. More than enough.

People may come and go, but we’re still here. And somehow, we’re fine. Maybe not right away, or even every day, but we’re fine. It’s a nice thought to think that at the end of the day you don’t really need anyone. That the people in your life are there because you chose them, and because they chose you. But perhaps one day you won’t chose them, or they won’t choose you anymore. You will choose differently. Perhaps nothing except for right here and right now can be granted, and for exactly that reason it’s a good idea to stop for a moment and take a look around you. We don’t know what won’t be here tomorrow, regardless of what we know today, so to celebrate anything that makes life a little bit more colorful, is never a bad idea. Life will continue to take turns we didn’t see coming. Some things we can control, so let’s. Some things we can’t control, so let’s. It took me some time to embrace, but there’s a genuine power hidden to be found behind the things we are powerless of. Just precisely that simple, and just precisely that difficult.

Namaste.

A stranger in my own capital

It always feels so ambiguous for me to go home. This wasn’t where I grew up, so to a certain extent even I find it exciting since it’s unknown for me too. I don’t know my way around here as I would. I don’t know where to cross over to make a short cut. I don’t know the hilly and narrow streets in Old town like my own back pocket. I don’t know where the best place to go for unnecessarily large and greasy pizza on a rainy day would be. I don’t know where the best coffee is, so I go to Espresso House, the Swedish Starbucks. And I bump into people constantly, because what I do when I walk is that I look up at all the new, foreign and unfamiliar instead of looking straight ahead. I walk at the pace of a stranger, because this isn’t my home, and I don’t know where to go. I need to think here.

But, these are the people I grew up with. They speak the language in which I was taught what is right and what is wrong, and what is important and what is not, and how to transfer every feeling I have about all of this from thoughts into words. This is the language in which I can discern dialects and appreciate them, pick up on irony and sarcasm, and on tenderness and earnestness like only a native speaker could ever do. This is where the codes I know applies. Where people hug and look each other in the eye while speaking. Where good service is characterized by humanity and presence rather than perfection and servility. Where people, at least rather than rarely, think twice.

When I was 14 years old I had an assignment on foreign affairs in school. I asked my teacher ”what do I need to do to obtain an A?”. She said, and I remember this entire conversation word by word to this very day. ”To obtain an E, all you need to do is to cover the facts. To obtain a C, you need to demonstrate that you can see the connections between certain events. And to obtain an A, you need to analyze.”. ”What does that mean?” I asked unknowingly. ”To analyze Adam, it means that you show that you possess the skill of seeing things from another perspective than your own”. ”That doesn’t sound too difficult” I replied. And she said ”In life, you’ll come to realize that a lot fewer people than you think, knows how to do this. To write down facts every ordinary person in the world can do, but to put your own point of view aside and to realize that the world sometimes is wider than how you see it, that’s extraordinary”.

I’ve repeated that conversation to myself many times since that day ten years ago. And for every time, it’s managed to make a little more sense, making me realize that perhaps it’s not the cities or countries that are fucked up, it’s the people in them.

Sweden isn’t a progressed a country as most people would give it credit for, but it’s not half bad. I didn’t need to move abroad or travel the world to see this, but I needed it understand that what we have, should be appreciated. It’s easy to think that small simple and extremely commonplace daily things like the relaxed tone in which sales assistant addresses you in or the private space given to you standing in line or on the subway by fellow people are universal things, but they’re not. And the only things that aggravate me to come here and surround myself by all of these cultural characteristics that actually do mean the world to me, is that most people don’t seem to understand the value of them. Would you cook and share a homemade meal for someone, who wouldn’t appreciate it more, than if the two of you went to Mc Donalds? Too few know that it’s the small things the greatest riches lay, and sadly that depletes the value of them.

The world is made difficult by simple people.

Are you blind?

Seattle, Washington. It is an eye-opening experience to work alongside different cultures, different religions, customs, and backgrounds. The constant curiosity of what to expect from people who’ve lived a completely different life than yourself is hard to put your finger on. Equally as exciting as it is daunting since you can never really know what to expect. That’s the exhaustive part of it. However, the most magical part of it, are the moments when despite all imaginable differences a common ground is found between people of completely different worlds. That kind of teamwork is one of a kind and the redeeming quality of all the times when that chemistry does not occur.

But it’s not always a bed of roses, despite the occasional magic. There come times when you question yourself whether or not your prejudices are still just prejudices, once they’ve proven to be truthful countless of times. You slowly learn that certain nationalities are prone to act in a certain way in a certain situation, and you also realize how you yourself are prone to act in a certain way in certain situations. Because it’s not only about others and their characteristics you learn, you also learn about your owns. Working with people very different from yourself brings out different sides of us, and over time you realize what sides, and gradually you can start to select what it is that you want to showcase, or even sometimes, have to showcase in some situations. This is the most educational of all when you actually learn how to veer these differences into a situation beneficial to you. When do you need to be firm? When do you need to remain calm? When do you need to care? When do you not need to care? In total, what battles do you need to take?

It’s rewarding to learn how others think and live, especially as a mean of getting new perspectives on yourself. The differences are countless, but the one thing I’ve learned be the one astonishing thing as good as all people have in common, regardless of all other differentiating aspects, is their pride of their origin. And it doesn’t matter if someone comes from a country with the most profitable passport in the world or from a country you might wonder how they even managed to escape from. In the beginning, I would discreetly roll my eyes when some people brought this up, thinking to myself that the world is just filled with ignorant people. So it took me quite a while to understand that what is normal to me, might not be as normal to everyone else. Because the truth is that what creates our perception of what’s normal and what isn’t, is what we have grown up with and are used to experience. And in a multinational environment, that is different for everyone. A simple fact I used to be completely dumb to.

When I wrote this I was sitting on the floor of my hotel room in Seattle leaned toward the bed enjoying a glass of wine after a long flight. I thought about some of the encounters I’d had throughout the day, and I thought about, what is really normal for me? I thought about the 14 homeless people I’d passed by on my way home from the Farmers Market, a walk of less than 1 kilometer. Anyone who’s familiar with the United States can easily imagine how the majority of these 14 people were not the casual disheveled beggars you might come across outside of European supermarkets. These were mentally ill people, oftentimes fully engaged in vehement conversation with themselves, or by screaming out loud for reasons only they could make sense of. Those were people far beyond the edge of destitution, who are treated like they don’t exist. And I thought this is not normal to me, the acceptance of social decay. I felt thankful since that wasn’t normal to me.

Then I thought about the barista in the coffee shop down the street, a flamboyant Afroamerican man with purple nails as long as my own pinky fingers, whose abundant personality and style no one took any notice of at all. And I thought, as much as it breaks my heart, how that wasn’t really normal for me either. Even I come from one of the most prominent and well-advanced and accepting countries in the world, that kind of individual expression is nowhere near to being a norm. And I thought, that no one like him, would probably earn a job like that back home. And I felt disgraced how that reality, was the one that was normal to me.

Then I thought about my more trivial encounters. I thought about the man standing in front of me in the supermarket a few days earlier, who instead of packing his own groceries waited for the cashier to do it for him. And I thought, how it’s not normal for me to make someone else do, what I am fully capable of doing myself. And I thought, that I am proud that I haven’t been brought up in a society that allows you to think, that why should I do my own heavy lifting if someone else can do it for me?

Yesterday I watched the Swedish Prime Minister host a press conference regarding reconstructing of the government. Having watched a lot of CNN on American television in the last few days it stroke how civilized a Swedish press conference is, with people respecting one another enough to let each other talk without interrupting. And I thought how amazing it is that something so fundamental to me, actually turns out to be something really amazing world wide. So I thought, I’m proud that allowing others to speak until finished, is not something I consider to be extra good behavior, it’s something I consider to be common sense.

I don’t believe that I was ever blind, I just didn’t know what to look out for. That I come from a well-developed country, that wasn’t foreign news to me even before I started this whole adventure, but the real gain of giving yourself an experience like this and to discover realities different from your own is not mostly to see different things but to see things differently. I now see that what I knew to be ordinary before, is actually very often rather extraordinary. Not necessarily always extraordinary good, but that’s also why it’s an understanding that has enriched with something more valuable than money could buy; the depth and the privilege of perspectives.

And I can’t help but think, how poor my life used to be without it.