Sometimes I think that some people who write inspirational articles and blog about “leaving the comfort zone” and “radical life changes,” actually have never experienced it.
Being a person who has gone through such changes several times, I would never ever encourage people in this direction or use this dangerous (or pressuring) dichotomy of your either brave and quit everything or boring/a coward.
Just to clarify, I am not complaining. I’m doing quite fine. But would I send into the virtual world blanket recommendations for others to simply quit everything? Hardly. What I do know is how difficult it is to change things. And I learned the hard way that the fact that you were brave enough to change your life doesn’t automatically mean that you will be fine afterwards or “stronger for it.” We don’t read stories that end in failure, not because there are none, but just because no one is writing about it.
At thirty-three, after spending my adult years cultivating a successful and stable adult life, I left my home in Russia and moved to Germany, becoming another “unemployed emigrant from Eastern Europe.” As a person who had spent years traveling as a respected academic, visiting conferences, working on grants, etc., this shift was quite challenging, to say the least.
Russia had become stagnant for me and I wanted opportunities. I knew I needed to change my old situation and moving to Germany was the “radical life change.” But once there, I found myself suffocating. I was alone. There was nothing to move forward for. I didn’t want what I wanted before. I had to take some action.
It wasn’t a rational decision. I can’t even remember how the idea took hold in my mind. But in autumn of 2013, with every penny I could save, I arrived in the sacred mountains of Wudang, China to live and train in a kung fu and tai chi school. I was overweight—about 20 kg (44 lbs) —and had virtually no experience.
Inevitably, my life changed radically. I never expected the physical and emotional transformations that come from surviving 6-8 hours of intense training everyday. The practice of internal martial arts pierces into the deepest layers of your sense of self and my life before couldn’t have prepared me for it. On top of the physical exhaustion, I was emotionally drained from the loneliness of being in an isolated place where so few people speak English and where finding a sincere connection is challenging.
You live in closed space, confined not because you can’t leave the school grounds, but because you have to train, six days a week, 6-8 hours a day. And of course, you can skip a training or two, but then why are you even here?
With so few people who speak English, let alone who you want to actually talk to, I felt lonely. But despite that, the thoughts that used to plague me, things like, “ugh, I am so lonely, fat, miserable, etc., and nobody loves me” no longer had an effect on me. I wanted to pity myself, but I couldn’t—I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. It’s better than that, I was following my calling. I was living in a sacred place, my own personal Narnia, which challenged everything I had known before. The layers kept coming off like an onion and I realized that nothing really matters when you have found your passion in life.
I used to think, “hey, I’m a good person, if I meet another good person, we have to like each other and if the good person doesn’t like me, I must be bad.” Sounds childish, but wouldn’t that be nice? It was a monumental realization for me to understand that if someone doesn’t like me, it doesn’t mean that either of us are bad people. On the contrary, I started to appreciate—even enjoy—my own company and was happy to only communicate with people I felt truly comfortable with.
When you take away all of the small talk, the advertising, the false images, that endless flow of meaningless information that we are bombarded with, your mind becomes clearer. Making my own deliberate selection of information was important skill that I live by now.
My kung fu teacher, a young Chinese guy with limited English, gave me a new perspective on the entire process of thinking. Communicating in English was difficult for him, so when he didn’t understand what I was talking about, he would simply ask me: “Masha, is it important?” It meant that if I said something that was actually important, he put significant effort and try his best to understand me. If it was not important, then why would he waste his energy? So I started to revise my thoughts and worries in the same way. “Is it important?”
After a year of training and studying, my savings were spent and by all measures, it looked like my time was up. But I desperately wanted to continue studying (a year of kung fu practice is a drop in the ocean). Then a miracle happened for me; I was allowed to stay at the school as an assistant coach. Five years ago, if someone told me that I would be ecstatic to work for room and board, I would have laughed out loud. But I know now that you can never predict what you will want or where life leads you.
Is it worth it to quit everything and “change your life”? I don’t know the answer. Everyone decides for themselves. I got lucky. I live in Narnia. Or Middle Earth. I have a sword, a bow, a bunch of young long haired kungfu brothers. I realize very well, that if I hadn’t been so miserable before, I would have never arrived in the place I am now. When your life is ok(ish), then you don’t desperately need that change. We never know where our path will bring us to. Being happy now is a part of being miserable before.
Rather than encourage the radical life change, I offer one piece of advice: if you take a step into uncertainty, you have to understand one thing—nothing will go exactly the way you expect, good or bad. The only thing that is guaranteed is this. Everything will be completely different, but that’s what makes it so interesting. I believe that overcoming the fear of suspense and not knowing is the greatest achievement for a person. I am still scared, but I am learning to ignore my fear and act despite it…
P.S. I would like to express my endless gratitude to my dear friend Amanda Lilah Harb, who helped me to translate this article. And thank you for always being here for me.
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Wudang mountains
