If I had to define my life with one word, it would be 'Change’.
Every single aspect of it has changed from the beginning. And it keeps on going: the place I call home, the number of people in my life, my memories and myself.
I have learnt that change is inevitable and priceless. Without it, there wouldn't be evolution and we would keep on being the ones we are now. But we are pushed to face new situations, live through them and learn. We have to do it even if we are alone or if our legs are shaking. Because everything that happens comes to teach us something, to make us wiser and give us more stories to tell. Every single challenge makes us richer on the inside.
As for me, I spent most of my childhood in a small village in the middle of some cereal fields. Back then, that was my whole world.
It was a really small reality to live in. Sometimes even too small and crushing. Even the most amazing beauty can become monotonous. Then Erasmus opened my horizons and prospectives as never before.
As I am writing, I am in Milan. I have been living here for less than two weeks. It’s completely different parallel reality, here everything is controlled by time. Everyone is running from a place to another. This city is a peaceful chaos. Always awake and moving.
But thinking back to my childhood years, I realize how they shaped me: they taught me to enjoy every single new experience to the fullest, travelling and human being I met and lived.
It was peaceful and relaxing living immersed in nature but I had the feeling of missing out something. This is why I feel gratefulness and freedom every time I take off. Because I know it’s the beginning of a new chapter I write. Every travel allow me to live and not just survive.
At the beginning of any trip, I am extremely content because I know I could still be there in the middle of nothing. I am not blaming that reality. At all. But I wasn't born for it.
Everyone has a place where he feels to belong to. Simply that one wasn’t mine.
Since I was really young, I craved to explore and cross as many other people's paths as possible.
It was a deep willing inside me.
Some people are focused on Gucci website other on Skyscanner. I belong to the second one. I want to create an amazing picture of my life as a great painter. I want to have endless fascinating stories to tell my grandchildren one day.
And every time I experience an Erasmus project this goal is accomplished fully.
Every project gifted me with amazing people who inspired me and widened my perspectives and thoughts. They contributed to my growth as no one else. I have learn more abroad than at home and school.
By exploring I realized how small and insignificant we actually are in front of the magnificence of this world.
Travelling makes you more humble and appreciate more and more even the smallest things.
As the umbrella when you are under the rain.
Through leaving you experience the joy to go into the unknown but also the happiness to come back at home. Whatever home is to you. For me home is that comfortable and warm place where I don’t need to wear flip-flops while showering.
Even if after the first travelling, you will never be back home completely, because a part of you will always still be in that special place with those amazing people. This is the enriching price of travelling.
Because travelling is the only thing you buy which makes you richer.
Ester Caffa (Italy)