I am a citizen of the world. Born and raised partially in India, in Africa, and the United States, I’ve come to value the diversity and breadth of my experiences in life. The people I’ve met, the places I’ve visited have provided me with a sense of self that has allowed me to connect with the very fundamental building block of humanity: existence.

As I’ve traveled through the past close to two years of my life, I’ve repeatedly come to a metaphorical crossroads in life, one thrusting forward the age-old question of the importance of one’s being, its interactions with others, its place in the vast universe. I’ve found myself constantly struggling to balance the yearning to formulate these relationships with the intense desire to discover my true self, my passions, my dislikes, my visions, and my dreams.

I’ve come to find that pen and paper are my confidants. Words create an irreverent solace, through which I’m able to express, as clichéd as this will sound, the deepest and darkest of my thoughts, wishes, and aspirations.

And with such genuine reflection, as was inevitable, I’ve also come to find that no longer am I my parents’ child. No longer do I see life through their lenses; no longer am can I identify myself as a small part of a large whole.

It’s evident now, more than ever before:

I am independent. I am alone.

We live our lives, in the shadow of our parents, family, and friends – a direct reflection of their ideals, values, opinions, and thoughts. They are the ones we look up to, respect, honor, and emulate. Their vision is one we oftentimes adopt as our own, a future that we often believe we see for ourselves.

However, at some point, the moment arrives – the one poignant moment when you realize that you are, in fact, your own person. That solitary moment is perhaps the most bittersweet in one’s life; it’s the one, sole time when the entire range of human emotion envelopes your core, your being, and you feel helpless and empowered all at once.

You travel through life, one day at a time, redefining all of the things you once thought you knew with conviction, rediscovering your true sense of self, while also evaluating and characterizing the differences between your values and those you grew up with. You come to accept that perhaps life is a series of phases, of chances, occurrences, and lucky breaks after all that characterize the various formative milestones that define one’s existence on planet Earth.

And so, a surreal feeling overwhelms you, the moment that realization of independence and solitude sets in. I say that not to solicit sympathies or reassurance from those around me, but rather to remind myself that my life is mine to live, my decisions – mine to make, my thoughts and opinions – mine to develop and stand behind.

With this realization, comes the inevitable question of the value of solitude and its alternatives. The evolutionary social tale dictates that one transition from a life of familial and fraternal familiarities to interactions of the romantic nature, nurturing the webs of interactions weaved throughout the influential years and milestones of life. This natural progression in the phases of one’s life begs the question of its necessity, and it’s become none too apparent for me in recent years.

Throughout this time, I’ve incrementally become exposed to a nagging of sorts. I’ve somehow grown accustomed to hearing the incessant rumblings throughout familial conversations, hinting, and most recently outright addressing, the lack of familial aspirations I’ve displayed (or rather, haven’t displayed, as the case may be). It’s the kind of banter that I’ve come to send through one ear and directly out the other, without even remote processing…for my sanity’s sake.

However, one comment from my grandmother recently caught me off guard. As we chatted about my current place in life, she asked whether she’d ever see me get married before her time grew near an end. Most strikingly, she inquired what I could possibly do with all of the money I earn as a part of my job…as it couldn’t possibly fill any void that relationships are expected to fill in one’s life. “In old age,” she said, “it’s the people around you who keep you going and look after you…hardly something money can do.”

This last bit rattled me, to say the least. I’d never even considered my career as something that simply earned me money. It’d never dawned on me that my dedication to said career was perceived as a means to a simple end. It’d never occurred to me that there was a need to justify my motivation towards excelling as a byproduct of the passions I possess and the innate desire I have towards positively contributing to something I hold so near and dear to my heart.

And then it hit me.

Perhaps this was the relationship that others find on a daily basis with other people. Perhaps I’ve come to find it in something, rather than someone. Is it indeed possible that I’m destined to embark on a relationship with one of my two passions in life…or perhaps the more appropriate question is, is it actually possible that my one true love is, in fact, an object and not a being?

The consequences and ramifications of such a lifestyle decision are bountifully negative. And I’ll admit that the relatively minimal number of years I have experienced, along with my track record of making life-altering decisions, undoubtedly indicates that I have plenty of additional time to come to a relatively definitive viewpoint on such a subject. Yet, unlike the results of many of my other personal reflections, I have yet to fully draw a conclusion with which I am satisfied and content in accepting. Perhaps this is just an indication of my immaturity and subsequent room for personal growth…I hope this assertion proves to be true, and that I’m one day left with an unwavering, unconditional, completely confident sense of self, whether solitary or attached.