So, Why Are You Still Here?

It’s a strange question to be asked, and yet someone thought it a good question, one that had to be asked, without knowing the background to my life or my interests: Why are you still here? Why didn’t you stay over there, in the United States, once the estate was settled and live your life there? Why travel all the way to Baltimore, have everything sorted out for you, and then take a plane right back to Germany and carry on with college and a life that you no longer need?

I believe some people have the wrong idea about what life is. Some, it appears, believe that I could have just dropped everything here in Germany, left things as they stand, that I do not need, or no longer need, all the hassle and stress of completing a series of college courses and ending up with a piece of paper at the end. Fair enough, this piece of paper, the title that it will bring with it, is probably of no use to me at all. Who needs me? Why shouldn’t I just go back and live a life of ease and luxury back in the States?

The answer is not quite so easy to frame as the question was to pose. It has a great deal to do with reality, with personality and with expectations. To be honest, I would have considerably less in the States than I have here in Germany. Here I have built up, over the last few years, a real life with a real relationship which means more to me than anything else. Here I have a purpose as well as friends. I never lived in Baltimore, I was born and bred in Wichita, where I have no connections any more. No contact to those I grew up with, attended school with, neighbors or whatever.

Photo Credit: betta design – Creative Commons

Yes, but… the questioner might have continued …all the hard work you’ve got in front of you with learning and examinations, why bother? It’s not as if you need them any more.

Someone, I fear, has the wrong idea about a person, about me in particular. There is a common belief, it appears, that I have inherited vast sums of money and could live a life of luxury with no cares in the world. Even if this were so, why would I want to give up all that I have here and sink into a life which has no meaning for me? Why should I stop attending college, just dump all the learning – which I greatly enjoy – and live life from the couch, so to speak?

The inheritance, well, I’m not going to give out facts and figures. I could live, let me put it that way. But would it be living the life that I wish to live? Is starting all over again, in what is now, for me, a foreign country, the way that I should go just because a few pennies came into my hands? I would rather not have had the inheritance, small as it may be. I would rather have the person, the man, the support that my Dad always gave me. Money cannot replace it. And, above all, I have something that I wish to do: I want to study; I want this worthless piece of paper, this useless title at the end, not because it is a title, not because it will set me above someone else, but because I have worked to gain it.

I have already started from the beginning, more times than most people know. There is nothing exciting about giving up and starting again. There is a lot exciting about starting afresh, but not the running away part, I don’t need that, I don’t want it either. I am staying, I am continuing with my studies because I want to, because that is what makes me what I am, who I am. Is that so difficult to understand?

Love & Kisses, Viki.

The post So, Why Are You Still Here? appeared first on Viktoria Michaelis.