Volunteering abroad was easily the best decision I've ever made in my life. It was utterly life-changing and forced me to change my perspective and also caused a dramatic shift every day mindset. Serving in a foreign country was extremely humbling and I gained a new sense of gratitude for all that I have and everything I have access to in America. I began to understood the deeper and more meaningful things in life and learned to ignore and put aside the insignificant things that we tend to get so caught up in.
This is what I realized about these few important things about life.
1. How blessed I am to be a native English speaker.
Teaching English to non-native speakers is not easy. Although you receive training on how to teach, it's still quite the challenging task. While it may be challenging to teach, I realized how much more difficult it must be to learn this language. The more I thought about it, the more I recognized that there's not a lot of reasoning or sense to English. The fact that I'm already a native English speaker and just know how to speak this confusing word makes me forever thankful.
2. There's so much to be grateful for in my everyday life, especially here in America.
Spending a semester in another country opened my eyes to all that I have -- both as a guest in the foreign country, as well as back home in America. As a foreign guest, I had it better than many citizens, and in America, I have access to clean tap water and am able to flush my toilet paper. Whether it's the big things, like having a car or getting to go to school, or the smaller, more indispensable things like shelter and enough food to eat, I became grateful for so much more in my every day life.
3. What a tiny space we occupy in the world and therefore how small our problems truly are.
Teaching English in a foreign country also had me thinking about the entirety of our population and what a small little portion our lives take up of it. We're one person in billions and every single one of us lives different, complex lives. Some have it better than others and some have more hardships and challenges than one another. When I realized this and saw first hand just how tough another person has it somewhere across the world, I understood that my problems weren't so bad. They were truly just "first world problems" that didn't even deserve my attention. You learn to distinguish what's really worth getting worked up about and what you should let go.
4. Despite how tiny we may seem, we have the power to make a significant impact.
Although we may just be one person out of billions, we do have what it takes to make a powerful impact in someone's life and in this world. We just have to have a warm heart, be understanding, put in the work and have the determination to do so. By teaching English to kids across the world, I was contributing to their future; a future that would be brighter because they had a skill set that would place them ahead of others and help them throughout life.
5. Even if we come from different backgrounds, cultures, countries, customs and languages, we're all human.
Like I said, all of us humans in the world come from different backgrounds and lead our own complex lives. Even though we come from different culture and countries, practice different customs and religions, may speak different languages and have different traditions, we still share the fact that we are all human. We must remember that despite all those different, we as humans share common wants and needs, no matter where we are at in the world. If we think of ourselves as global citizens, then stop segregating each other by culture or religion. Think of us as one common global community and we can be more understanding of and warm towards people of foreign places.
6. Mama Earth is far too big and loaded with beauty to stay in one place our whole lives.
While I always understood how big our beautiful green and blue planet was, it took moving across the world to comprehend just how much there is to potentially see and experience on mama Earth. The world is so big and there's so much to learn and take in from every single part of it. Whether it be the languages, traditions or way of life in a certain place, if you're moving around and exploring different corners of the globe, then you'll constantly be learning. Not only will you be learning, but you'll be seeing things you never would have thought that our world could possibly hold. As Augustine of Hippo says, "The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page."
