Dreaming Abroad, Living Later
In my twenties, I used to imagine myself working in some glass-towered office in a foreign city. I could see it clearly—me with a laptop slung across my shoulder, catching the metro in London or sipping coffee in a Parisian café, scribbling postcards to friends back home. I wanted to belong to that world where accents mixed freely, where airports felt like extensions of one’s living room, where life seemed larger, shinier, and more exciting.
But dreams are often impatient. And reality, as I discovered, rarely runs on our youthful timelines.
Through my twenties, the wish to work abroad remained just that—a wish. Family expectations, financial realities, and the simple uncertainty of youth kept me rooted in India. There were times when opportunities appeared, but they slipped away, either because I wasn’t ready or because life had other plans.
It stung. I watched classmates and colleagues move overseas, posting pictures from New York, Singapore, or Dubai. I felt left behind, as if my story was progressing slower than it was supposed to. The twenties, after all, are painted as the decade of exploration. Mine felt small, confined, unfinished.
It was only in my thirties, when I switched careers and stepped into an industry I had never imagined myself in, that the world began to open up. The irony wasn’t lost on me. What I had longed for in my twenties came only after I gave up the version of myself I had been clinging to.
Switching industries was terrifying. It meant learning from scratch, starting at the bottom when peers my age were already settled. But it was also liberating. I was no longer chasing a dream in the exact way I had pictured it. I was allowing myself to be surprised.
And surprise me, it did. Work took me across borders, across languages, across entire ways of being. In a span of a few years, I found myself packing and unpacking in new places, each time discovering a little more of the world and of myself.
Since then, I have lived and worked in eight countries and twelve cities. Each place has left a mark on me:
In Singapore, I learned efficiency—the beauty of things working smoothly.
In Berlin, I learned rebellion, the comfort of questioning norms.
In Dubai, I learned ambition, the energy of constant growth.
In smaller towns—ones not marked by global skylines—I learned simplicity, the joy of unhurried conversations and shared meals.
The list is long, but what ties them together is this: every city became a mirror. Each reflected back a part of me I hadn’t known before.
Living abroad isn’t just about new foods, new languages, or new work cultures. It’s about the quiet transformations. The way you learn to measure groceries in kilos and pounds. The way your tongue slowly adjusts to new vowels. The way you stop saying back home and start saying one of my homes.
Looking back, I am almost grateful my twenties dream didn’t materialise. If it had, I would have arrived abroad wide-eyed and underprepared, more interested in chasing the fantasy than living the reality. In my thirties, I brought with me resilience, perspective, and a readiness to embrace discomfort.
Dreams delayed are not dreams denied. Sometimes, they are dreams matured like wine, better savoured with time.
Of course, living abroad is not all postcards and Instagram frames. There is paperwork, bureaucracy, loneliness, and the ache of missing family milestones. Birthdays, weddings, funerals—they happen without you. Airports become both thrilling and exhausting. Friendships, no matter how deep, sometimes feel temporary, held together until one of you moves again.
And yet, I would not trade this life. The gift of seeing the world—not as a tourist, but as a resident, someone who learns the rhythm of a city from inside is priceless. It has taught me adaptability, humility, and above all, gratitude.
Even now, after years of airports and visas, I remain the girl who once dreamt of working abroad. The difference is, she no longer feels late. She understands that life is not a race against age. It is a journey of alignment, of being in the right place at the right time, with the right self.
Eight countries, twelve cities and I know the count is not finished yet. But wherever I go next, I carry the lesson that dreams arrive on their own timelines. Our only job is to remain open, to keep walking, to keep saying yes.
And so, when I sip coffee today in a small café tucked into a European street, or when I step onto a subway in a city whose language I still stumble through, I smile. Because this is the life I once dreamt of, just not in the decade I imagined.
It came later. And somehow, it came better.
