A blank page

We were watching this movie called Paterson the other day which is about the daily meanderings of a young bus driver in the city of Paterson, New Jersey. The film is centered around the guy's job, his life as a husband to this woman who's brimming with creative energy, and his few leisure time activities. Through everything, there is his poetry connecting all the dots.

Towards the end of the movie, there is a dialogue that goes: "Sometimes an empty page presents most possibilities". Today is about that empty page for me.

Whether you leave a place you've known or come back to a habitual one, you're always returning to something new - a blank page. Of course, there's some familiarity. There's the house you grew up in, there's the desk you always work at, there are the friends you grab a drink with after you're done with work. But travelling from one place to another gives you a renewed outlook towards your own life. And the longer the span of your absence, the greater the difference that you notice.

This is a good thing.

If you are able to put your own life into perspective, you can turn your reflections into positive changes that can lead to better outcomes for yourself. This may sound like a very one-dimensional view and the cynic in me is greatly compelled to differ but I won't let her.

Last year, I had the good fortune of going back home after roughly a year and a half. Suffice to say, I experienced what I'd like to term "reverse culture shock". There were those people and things I'd known all my life, exactly as I left them... but I had changed so much within. Since I then had knowledge of both worlds, it wasn't too difficult for me to re-acclimatise myself to my former surroundings. Still, coming back from there gave me a renewed perspective and motivation for my days to come.

It is very easy to cling to what you know best, to continue writing on an already well-written page, but in doing that we fail to remember the many possibilities a blank page gives. You have enough space to draw pictures, not just write words, and colour them in.

I suppose this is a small reminder for myself, as I plan to embark on newer journeys in the future to come. And while I say that, I think of the warmth of what's familiar to me and also remind myself that our choices do not always necessarily have to be a trade between two things.