Effects of an Open Mind

You should always keep an open mind about new experiences, leave any judgment you carry until after you’ve become acquainted with the experience. Closing your mind to a new experiences limits how much you truly draw from it, or whether or not you even peruse the venture in the first place. My eyes had not always been open to this philosophy but after moving to Germany I took this way of life to heart.
By my fourteenth birthday I had relocated nine times. That’s nine times I’ve had to pack up everything I own, nine times I’ve had to change schools and leave my friends behind, nine times I’ve had to take a plane or drive cross country knowing I’d never experience the life and culture of someplace again, nine times I’ve completely had to abandon everything I know, set down shop, and become accustom to life somewhere new. So when I learned I had to move, yet again,  from a life I had become accustom to it shouldn’t have fazed me, it should have been the same as every other time I’d done the same exact thing but it wasn’t, because I was moving to Germany.
Now as you can imagine at that point in my life I had become fairly accustom to change, change was my life and had been since my birth but never had I once experienced a life outside of North America and I wasn’t too keen to either. The idea of going to a land where no one spoke my language was a bit terrifying and I hated that I had no say in the matter but that was me closing my mind to a new experience and although I wouldn’t realize it till long after, Germany was probably one of the best experiences of my life.
In Germany I made my best friends, but even the people I didn’t talk most often or prefer to hang out with where family, we all trusted each other, which was great because at the school we went to it was impossible to keep a secret, if you told one person everyone knew. In Germany I had more freedom and depended less dependent upon my parents because I could travel alone with ease and the city I lived in was designed for walking and biking. I also got the chance to travel, a lot. All this travel opened my eyes to so many different cultures and allowed me to become submerged in so many different experiences and there was rarely one I didn’t like.
Then it came time to leave, yet another period of transition in my life But this time was different, like I said moving was my life, about as noteworthy to me as breathing is to you but moving from Germany was akin to a sudden asthma attack. I didn’t want to go. When I made a remark about not wanting to leave to my family my mother had brought to my attention that I never wanted to come here in the first place but now I never wanted to leave and shortly after that I realized I had judged Germany too harsh too quickly. I had shut my mind to what an amazing experience it could potentially be and I was wrong to do so because Germany is perhaps the best place I’ve ever been.