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Shifting houses is not a joke, and shifting countries is an even bigger hassle. For those who are not sure why I am so concerned about shifting all of a sudden, it’s only because I experienced the pain of shifting from Singapore to India a few weeks back.
The pain of leaving behind what my mind thought was ‘home’ for the last nine years, the pain of throwing away stuff that made the house a mess and I should have thrown away anyway, and of course the pain of packing and worrying about how much extra check-in luggage Indigo would allow us to fly with. Pain, pain and only pain.
They say that the pain will leave once it has finished teaching you. So, here I am sitting with a laptop and listing the five important life lessons this entire shifting process taught me one more time. Numbers 2 and 5 are my personal favourites.
1. Buy only what I should:
This is not a new realization. At least for me. But each time, I enter a store, physical or online, my wisdom tends to rest for a while on the backseat. Trending denim, dresses, cute cutleries, home décor items, tote bags, soft toys (umm…yes…I still love them), hand cream, foot cream, day cream, night cream, and storage boxes all find a place in my shopping cart. The fact that I don’t have enough space to keep them back at home later is a different discussion altogether.
Such impulsive shopping creases my forehead when the need to shift places arises. After gifting husband a backache with overweight luggage, I am trying to control myself these days. But the millions of online shopping apps in India are not helping. Only I know how much willpower I am exercising to stay away from scrolling Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Nykaa, Meesho and those my fingers always itch to discover. Seems like I need several lifetimes to ingrain the buy-only-what-I-should life lesson in my DNA.
2. Keep my mind rust-free:
Nothing is permanent in life. You know it already. Even I know it by now. Shifting addresses frequently will make you realize this eternal fact more. If your life has been all about packing carton boxes and moving to the next location, you should not make yourself comfortable under any roof. The more you attach yourself to something or someone, the more painful it will be for you to detach.
So, with every piece of clothing, book and utensil going inside the suitcases and boxes, I scraped every layer of my memories in the old ‘home’. Because I can deal with extra check-in luggage by paying a few extra bucks at the airport. But the extra burden of memories will cost me my peace of mind. And I am the real-life Uncle Scrooge when it comes to paying more for my sanity than I should. So, not letting my mind accumulate the rust of date, time and location is my way of navigating to the next destination.
3. Don’t rush to settle down:
Even though I was all set to build a life in India from scratch again, the endless to-dos, grocery shopping, and adjustments to this and that in the new apartment made the process an exhausting one. As if life was running on a delayed schedule. But that is my version of looking at things. What about life? Because it always runs on a schedule of its own and knows what’s best for me.
Preparing a cup of tea in the morning took fifteen to twenty minutes. Where did I keep the cups? Where is the ginger? Where is the grater? Which storage box has the tea packets? The simplest tasks turned into frustrating ones. I was rushing to settle down within a few days ignoring what life was trying to tell me all along. Don’t rush. You can’t settle down just like that. It needs some more time, patience and your ability to accept that chaos is an unavoidable element before peace (a schedule in my case) is established.
4. Can’t survive without a daily routine:
This is what the last few weeks have made me realize about myself. I am not built to enjoy the adrenaline rush and plan things at the last moment. A well-laid plan or routine, no matter how mundane or boring is good for my gut and mental health. No point in guessing that my initial days in India had everything else happening around me except a routine. And I realized that I needed it. Like a drug addict.
A routine is what helps me to cope with the new environment. Otherwise, my restless mind would want to return to the life I had made for myself in the last nine years in another country. An impossible thing to do now. This explains my rush to settle down. Thankfully, between organizing the wardrobes, and kitchen, preparing meals, and planning what to publish next, life has gradually returned on its track and so has its passenger. Each hour is now bound with some scheduled tasks or other keeping me alive and crazy enough.
5. Change is always a fresh start:
A new home. A new routine. A new blog. New ideas. This is how 2025 is treating me so far. And this is how I want to look at this shift. The brighter side of always being on the move is that I can push the reset button and reshuffle my life the way I want. An opportunity many don’t get even if they want. So, without looking back at what I have left behind, I want to look forward and try to make out of this new life as much as I can before the freshness starts to fade.
The entire shifting process imparted me with the above life lessons. Luggage has arrived. The new home is more or less set. The only job in hand now is to find myself once more.
What did life teach you lately?
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