perspective.

I am giving myself the time to understand what this gap year meant for me. Maybe I will never grasp the whole effect it had. Maybe it will keep on shaping me ten years down the road. When we read, hear, write things, the circumstances and our context changes the way we perceive them. Similarly, these factors mold the way we understand events.

It is no secret that our society has been in a constant state of change. Things move, they develop. However, for some reason we keep on creating a discussion on how "drastic" and "never seen before" our present is. Nevertheless, I have noticed that as a person from the millennial generation, I have come across a feeling of dissatisfaction. And it is a feeling that is shared amongst my peers. We don't want to walk on existent paths anymore. We are now more decided to follow our dreams, more determine to change the lifestyles that exist. When I was trying to comprehend where this feeling was coming from, I stumbled upon one of Gillian Flynn’s quotes and her words hit me like a rock:

“We [are] the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show. You know the awful singsong of the blasé: Seeeen it. I've literally seen it all…”

I understood in that moment that I had to change the way I was looking this world.

As a Winterline student we were all taught that we shouldn't be tourists, we should be “travellers”. With confused eyes, we all stared at each other wondering what did that even mean. We payed more attention in some places and less in others. We pushed our boundaries. There were highs and lows. We felt ashamed when we didn’t get out of our comfort zones and awful when we did. We learned how to see things for the first time. The funny thing, is that for many of us, it was indeed the first time.

We come from a generation of bucket lists and pretty instagram filters.
We go out, snap.
We look good, snap.
We meet someone, snap.
At some point in Winterline we had to learn how to be present; how to be mindful.

Maybe Winterline didn’t show me the entire world. Maybe Winterline didn’t teach me everything there is to know. But Winterline showed me it was possible to create my own path and Winterline encouraged me to go out and construct my own reality.