No longer self-conscious!!

“I think it is a great opportunity for you to incorporate all that you have wanted and throw away parts of you that you don’t like. A chance to change. It is easier to change yourself when people don’t know you and your past” – In an article in Frozen thoughts.

When people leave the cozy confines of their home towns and begin working/studying in other cities, a very significant transformation takes place especially if they don’t have their friends working/studying alongside them. This transformation may not be discernible in the very beginning but as one settles down, one feels it deep down and on the surface also, the change, if it is for the better, manifests itself soon.

One is no longer bound to the habits of the past; it is a new beginning in a person’s life, another chapter in the novel of the life story. Nobody in the new environment knows him/her and in this short anonymity he/she feels lost for a brief period. In this interregnum before new friends and acquaintances are developed and before the new city becomes another cushion, there is a scope for change.

I was having a discussion around this topic with my sister. I feel great just knowing that when she had been in Bangalore, she had also walked the same streets, seen more or less the same sights and the city had changed her also positively to become a still better human being. This is no digression for she told me how a person becomes more independent, more self confident and especially if in a work environment, how spending the money one earns makes one feel good.

I couldn’t have wanted more assurance for I was wondering how far Bangalore has had a positive influence on me. I have shed my inhibitions and am no longer as self-conscious as I used to be. People from the past are no longer around me to make me feel limited; their image of me isn’t influencing me. I no longer feel compelled to think whether my behaving in any manner will take people around me by surprise. In a sense, this has made me more social; new surroundings have goaded me to listen more to people around and connect with them. Seeing and knowing about different perspectives and aspirations are making me feel small.

It seems as if I was ignorant all along or is it that I have discovered a new sense of observation? Time will answer. But Bangalore and the work environs away from the pseudo-conservative, hot Chennai has so far been a more-than-welcome change in my life and I’ll remain thankful for it!!