She’s been thinking about this day: Dec 15th, 2020 since Dec 15th, 2010! She wanted to prove to herself that she would make it in a foreign country, however, she’s been haunted by her interrupted aspirations, interrupted because her entire world crumbled to the ground in March 2009. She was shocked to her core, she was not done yet. It was not supposed to go that way. She never made huge leaps in her career, but she designed her roadmap, and as she approached that finish line, she was pushed away from her own path, she was not done yet! Her immigration plans to Canada were designed to be made after she reaches her career’s peak. Could she continue what she started in a new foreign country? She must! She will use the magical recipe that served her so well up till the moment she left: be open to challenge and smile big. She accepted the challenge: go to a new foreign country! She, however, found her self browsing through unsincere polite smiles, the time on this land is swallowed by trivial monsters such as transportations, and broken trains. People wanting to connect so they enroll her in marketing pyramids. Can’t they see what a waste of time this is? Stressing about the precious time that is wasted in transit and broken trains, she decided to read the city through its communications. Ads running in the transit are almost equally divided between educational institutions promising jobs after graduation and financial institutions promising freedom after debts. What a scary outlook, a scary city. Did she make a mistake? left a familiar ground field so she gives her neck to educational institutions or maybe a financial one? Her magic potion of being open to challenge and smile big doesn’t seem to be working in this land. Coming from the Gulf where the market is unapologetic about its employment rules, she expected the Canadian market to be fairly manageable given the fact that it exists on a “fair land”. As she used most of her tricks and magic within the first 2 years of her settlement process, in attempts to pick up her path, where she left off, she turned against herself. She kept thinking of Dec 15th, 2020 not with hope but anxiously. Was she competing with herself? Why it is so important to her to see herself as “successful” and why it is only related to her career? She never stopped doubting herself, she never stopped being anxious about that date. One decade passed from Dec 15th, 2010 to Dec 15th, 2020. It is a long time to reflect upon. She spent a long time not knowing how to read the mixed signals that she’s been constantly bombarded with, hence, not getting what she wanted. This kind of time in hand, it forced her to look outwards. She learned that her inflexibility came from her rejection of the Canadian way. A landscape that is carefully crafted to welcome you at an arm's length and never to give you a solid and direct answer. It makes you feel that you’re missing something and that you are not good enough, it offers to help you work on yourself with a series of outdated and useless training so you can eventually fit, if ever. She realized that it was in her hand to either accept what is or leave back to her familiar ground field. She did not accept the new ways and she did not get back to her familiar ground. Instead, she turned her focus on helping hands, after all her attempts to leave her past life and memories of war and fearing for her life behind, it followed her to the Pacific Ocean. In Dubai, it was easy to blind her eyes from her past as she immersed herself in work and dining! An environment that only cared about its own agenda. While in this new land and despite its deceiving market, it cares about the vulnerable. She finally found a common ground where she can operate from.

The past 10 years, reminds her of Leonardo Di Caprio’s character in The Wolf of Wall Street, after being stripped from drugs and alcohol, his lifelong friend asked him: “how’s been sober?” It sucks, it’s boring, I wanna kill myself, he says. Then he directed his energy into something new and he achieved a self-actualization status in a different way. Dubai was the drug and alcohol, Canada is the rehab and the ankle bracelets. It sucks, it’s boring but it is a sober life.

A decade passed by to teach her a few valuable lessons: Not to romanticize any idea, any country, any person. She learned that there is no home anywhere and that everyone has bits and pieces of a home. She learned that peer pressure strips people from their rights to know themselves and follow their dreams and that money doesn’t come and go. It recycles in extremely small amounts.

She learned that Dec 15th, 2020 is just a date!