Author: George Kitsaras

Editor-in-chief / Psychologist / Doctoral researcher

My niece and also my goddaughter was born late in the evening on the 6th of February 2018. She was born in Athens, quite a distance from where I am. Fortunately or unfortunately for the past 3 and a half year I have been far away from many people in my life. People I love, people I care about. People who I wish to be able to see and hug more frequently. The truth is that I have lost, I am losing and I will lose many moments with them. Moments like weddings, parties, chilled out coffees and even boring ones when I would have wished to be somewhere else, somewhere far away. Most importantly, I will lose moments of life and death. I will not be there when a new person comes to this world and equally important I will not be there when someone I care about passes away. It’s a terrible thing to be considering but it’s true. Life, as in birth, and death represent a uniquely stable and unescapable moment in our otherwise constantly changing, volatile and ever more complex lives.

My decision to move away was a conscious and well-planned one. My goal: to move to a foreign and largely unknown land in pursue for something better. In pursue for opportunities and in pursue for challenges and knowledge that will widen my horizon. I don’t regret it at all! The time that I have spent away enriched my personal and professional life in a profound way. I saw things, I met people and I experienced moments that I couldn’t even imagine. The past 3 and a half years of my life have been a train ride to an unknown destination following a treacherous path. A path with constant ups and downs. A path with brutal and unexpected turns. This ride will take me somewhere but I’m not sure where or who’ll be by my side at the end. Despite losing moments with people I love, I wouldn’t change my decision to hop on this crazy ride. This ride gave me so much and it’ll hopefully continue to give me much more. I don’t know, and maybe I never want to know, how life would have been if I stayed put and never embarked on this ride. All I know and all I will ever say to my beautiful niece and goddaughter is to always keep her eyes open for those trains that can take her somewhere else even if that’s far away, even if the ride looks scary.

After all, life is like a train ride: you don’t know what the last station holds unless you’re willing to take it.