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May 12, 2017

Choose Life 🇩🇪

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose relocation. Choose giving life a fresh1 beginning. Choose an one-way flight ticket. Choose fitting your entire life in a 23 kg suitcase. Choose getting rid of all your crap. Choose a higher Human Development Index. Choose being thousands of kilometers far away. Choose devastating your loved ones. Choose different bureaucracies you still don’t understand. Choose calling another place home. Choose not fitting in (you never did anyway!). Choose saying goodbye to places, food and friends, then choose new places, food, and friends. Choose memories. Choose developing new tastes. Choose being forced to develop social skills. Choose ignorance. Choose mundane and boring activities as exciting adventures. Choose not speaking your mother language. Choose limited self-expression. Choose missing the food from your country, and especially your mum’s. Choose letting part of your heart be elsewhere. Choose adapting 24/7. Choose wondering what the fuck you are doing. And choose getting the answer as soon as you go outside. Choose not understanding jokes from natives. Choose recognising you can do anything, anywhere. Choose not knowing if you should. Choose the bittersweet feeling of moving abroad. Choose to be afraid. Choose your future. Choose life.

But why wouldn’t I want to do a thing like that?

I chose to choose life. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got Berlin?2

1

See HelloFresh, which helped me relocating to Berlin.

2

The entire essay is inspired by Mark Renton’s “Choose Life” speech from Trainspotting, a movie that makes me think a lot about life choices.