Whoa.

I’m a bit iffy on life-changing experiences. Or maybe, it’s more the Hollywood version of them that bugs me.

A homeless man in Los Angeles finds his solace in a cello, overcoming his poverty and calming his mental instability: The Soloist.  A Roman warrior loses his family, wealth, and freedom due to the hate of a tyrant: the Gladiator. A teacher, surrounded by underprivileged high school students, faces hate crimes and still has undying dedication to her students: Dangerous Minds.

These Hollywood clips are the first life-changing experiences that come to mind: an artist’s struggle, a warrior’s vengeance, a teacher’s dedication. But the plotlines always make me think, “What have I accomplished in my life?” Or is Hollywood really just full of clichés?

Focusing less on a Hollywood fairytale and more on life-changing experiences in an everyday sphere, think to the stories I’ve heard throughout my life. What stories have I been surrounded by? Those of love, loss, war, fear, anger, etc.

I’m not sure what my parents would say, but from an outside perspective their marriage has always been about sacrifice. Sacrifice your status for love, your country for life, your wealth for happiness. For me it’s easy to say that the war in Bosnia was by far their biggest life-changing experience. How their lives descended into a whirlpool of uncertainty and fear.

After their evacuation from Bosnia and refuge in Germany, the war was a sort of omen that hung over the heads of ex-Yugoslavians. The subject of war always hung around full wine glasses at dinner parties, waited around for the end of a football discussion, and clung to the back of the laborer, reminding him day after day that he was now a ditch-digger

I have listened to these war stories all of my life. Most of the time they weren’t about the actual pain caused during the war; the people never heard from, the people who were pronounced dead, the houses that were burned, the memories that are gone. These conversations were kept for more intimate times and people. In most cases, the war was talked about as a cause of the current status of lives.

A man who used to look after me when I first moved to the U.S. had a heart attack the same week that his wife was stung by a scorpion. They were an elderly couple who were abandoned by their children’s ideals and pursuits of something greater, in a country not their own. I remember seeing them both one night in the hospital, worried about the hospital bill, hurt by their children’s absence, and scared about what was to come. Health in order, they grieved for their home country, believing that if they were in Bosnia, if the war had never happened, they would never have been in that situation or at least they would have managed to fend for themselves.

It was easy for me, as a child, to think of the war as my biggest life-changing experience. What it took me a long time to figure out, though, was that I wasn’t as affected by the war as I believed I was. It may seem cruel to say that, but I was two when the war started and I, along with my family, was evacuated that very same year. My life couldn’t have undergone any significant change if I hadn’t yet learned to develop as a person.

I remember walking into my second grade classroom in San Francisco and worrying about making friends and learning to speak the language. Not a week had gone by and I was picking up basic words and signing most of what I wanted to a mass of curious girls. I was so conscious of what was going on at the time, that even this is difficult for me to consider a life-changing experience.

I recently saw a movie called Project X (2012) that revolves around the theme of life-changing experiences. The young leads Thomas, Costa, and JB are on the bottom of the social ladder that is so evident in American high schools. In this, “coming of age” story the trio decide to throw the biggest party of their lives in order to finally make themselves known at school. The party grows bigger and more dangerous with an alarmingly quick pace, much to the dismay of birthday boy and resident of the damaged home, Thomas.  The place goes haywire, riot police try to break up the party on numerous occasions, yet to no avail the police retreated, and the newscasters were screaming “Anarchy!”  Thomas soon realizes how epic and how life-changing this party is for him, standing on his roof, he throws up two fingers at the  live feed being taped from a helicopter, and jumps into the pool:

I actually mean, jumped off the roof, into the pool, and on went the party.

Now, I’m not saying that my life-changing experience requires some crazy infestation of teenagers, supplied with booze, narcotics, and crazy stunts; all I’m saying is that I envy Thomas’ moment of clarity. This moment where he stood out over the mass of people in his pool, garden, front yard, driveway, and street and thought, “this is really happening.” I envy him for this moment, because it’s difficult to chalk up my life-changing experience to one particular moment.

So if I was to try I would say, my biggest life changing experience so far has been moving to Austria. It may sound corny, but it’s true. Everything I had and did in San Francisco, the person I was and the people I knew, the places and events, everything is gone. Not from the face of the earth, but from my present reality.

I had to leave behind all the people, sights, and events to move halfway across the world and figure out how to be someone new. I started with college. I knew that my options were limited and that studying “anything I wanted” was not going to happen.  I enrolled in what I was skilled at and tried to keep my head down for the duration of my years here, without much success.

Much like certain experiences in my parents’ lives and the experiences in Thomas’ life in Project X, I knew that not everything could be perfect. I knew that I was going to have language barriers and, therefore, friendship barriers, employment barriers, and, in general, success barriers. I knew that I was going to lose certain friends with time and I knew that it would be painful to try to hold on to certain friendships over the distance; I knew that I was going to make new friends and lose some along the way as well.

Although I’ve moved dozens of times in my life, none have been more influential than my move to Austria. After four years, I’ve realized how my opinion of certain things in San Francisco have changed, both valuing things more and also realizing how its nicer to live without certain things.

My life-changing experience may be missing the “whoa” factor. After four years, I’m finally stopping to look back and realize that my experiences in Austria may not be like those out of some Hollywood movie; iit may not be as raw or painful as my parents’ experience, and it definitely is nothing like Project X, but it’s significant enough.

I could have talked about my adventures around Europe with my roommate or about that time that I nearly drowned, but I feel that life-threatening experiences aren’t as significant as life-changing experiences, at least in reference to the growth made in retrospect.

Maybe the drowning story would have been cooler.  

This life-changing experience, however, is not some fairytale of overcoming monsters and witches, or of overcoming some personal fear; it’s just a story, about a girl, realizing that picking up and starting over, isn’t all that hard to do.