Comfort zones - Jana
Leave the comfort, enter emotional prosperity - Jana Bergmann
It is not always easy being a young person, on the one hand everybody, including yourself, has expectations towards you, your performance, your career, the degree to which you are social, the extent to which you have your feelings and actions under control and so much more. This phase of our lives is full of ups and downs. We easily get stressed, feel pressured or a bit lost, because our future seems so unpredictable.
A long time ago, I decided to conquer any feeling of uncertainty with new ideas, small adventures and reminding myself to stay curious about this world. You never know how long you will be living on this planet or what happens to you in the meantime. So, we might as well make the best out of the moments that we have right now. For me, one way to achieve this is by getting out of my comfort zone.
When I was about 9 months old, I lost my ability to hear. When you turn deaf, the world seems to change with you. The silence can be threatening, but if you embrace it for a while, it opens your eyes for so many things. It teaches you to observe people and their behaviour more closely. It shows you how being disabled in one area, does not mean you do not have the opportunity to shine in others. In my case, it also offered the option to learn reading properly: I started reading lips to understand people and read books to understand the world. There is not just one reality. Everything depends on perspectives and the approach you take in life.
Growing older, I gained my hearing back through numerous ear-surgeries, so I had to find new challenges in life. I travelled and started studying in foreign country. I tried to interact with people of all kinds of backgrounds, whether its their nationality, sexuality, confession or the social class they come from. I tried a lot of different voluntary work, jobs and hobbies, to get to know myself in different settings and explore novel fields of interest. Again, it made clear that what surrounds us is as colourful and exciting as it can be. If you take the effort to open your eyes and leave your social bubble, question your own beliefs and standards, if you allow other people’s perception to be as rightful as yours, you will find beauty in nearly every moment of your life and in yourself.
These passion posts were all personally written by Communiqué members who wanted to share their passions, hobbies and talents. Do you have a passion that you would like to write about? Send an e-mail to internaffais@communique.utwente.nl and we'll walk you through the details!
