How to get some experience (in the difficult way)

According to Confucius, there are three methods to gain wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.
Experience really puts you through life, it exposes you through its highs and lows. That's why it's so bitter. But it can be also sweet, somehow. Not afraid to be burned, I always chased experience, adventure, fullnes of life. Here is a little tale about how I decided to leave Italy and get to the world, and start writing!

When I was a child I often dreamt with open eyes...

 Exotic places, hazardous jungles, red sunsets and spiders, dangerous animals guarding mysterious secrets as yet untouched by man. In all these adventurous dreams there was a stranger with wild eyes, that in the end, would become a friend, old and true, telling me stories about pirates and brave travelers in places filled with ancient cultures and evocative, inexplicable dangers.
 I also dreamed about different scenarios: big cities, metropolis full of different people, rivers, bridges, castles and ghosts and fairies. In my odd, rich, fascinating world there was always a treasure to be found, so I was digging in my granddads garden, or dangerous animals to be tamed, so I was putting my finger in the rabbit’s cage or I was chasing the chickens in the courtyard.

 I was born and raised in a small village on a hill in the northern Italian region of Piedmont, where the wine is good, they all know each other and the weather is cold and foggy; as sober as the temper of the people around. Not really my style.

 Over time I learned how to manage my nature, so sensitive and imaginative, not easily led; school was a mess, and just a nuisance. I only liked reading, writing reports and drawing pictures. I stayed strong, with the help of loving parents that taught me how to fit into society, fed me good food and how to deal with the alarm ringing in the morning, still my worst enemy.
 At University it was different, I was a great student and I started to go abroad very often, living in cool places like France and Spain, learning languages and having fun. After my graduation I started a carrier as a translator, wearing my suit and living my ‘bourgeois’ life.
I was not impressed and not quite happy…So in the end my desire for adventure triumphed!
Goodbye to the random thoughts achieving nothing and the awfully dull carrier…I left everything behind me, and with a smile left for Australia, all alone and with no plans in mind…Just go, go ahead, break the wave like a surfer does, follow the flow, follow the rip till the end, till the end of the rainbow if necessary, where lies the pot of gold.
 I always wanted to be a treasure hunter. I’m not talking about money or jewels, but experiences and cool things, the bricks with which I could build ideas and emotions. That’s what travelling means to me. To shine. To shine with emotions, inspirations, new light and a new perspective on things.

 Australia. Two years with a trolley. Arrive in a new place, find a job, just a random job, stay there for a while, a week, two, or a month even, and then leave, leave again, for another city with a strange name and new faces, new voices, many different ways of life in beautiful and sometimes surreal sceneries, open spaces filled with a new sense of liberty. Breathe!
 It isn’t always as easy as it sounds. In fact, it’s a bit of a challenge. You must care for your passport like a newborn child, be really careful and reactive, since you are in charge and you do not want to leave things behind.
 You must accept to live (or, more precisely, to cohabitate) in a hostel, or in funky and cranky houses, share all the facilities, and sometimes deal with peoples strange habits …Sometimes the bed is very uncomfortable, there is no pillow, no real covers, no frills, no heaters. But sometimes you can get very lucky and you can get a beach house, which pays you off for all your troubles! Well, your manicure is a mess, and your clothes are in a pile, since there is no real space to put all your things…Just this big blue trolley (read suitcase), that I start to love just like Tom Hanks loved his Wilson ball in Cast Away!
No place for my books, I had to drop them all around! And I learned to do the same with my clothes, buying new ones at every stop at the local Charity shop. Gee I love Australian Op Shops! You can find anything there! And I just love to shop for charity.

I quickly learned how to get rid of unnecessary things, keeping only what I needed in my lovely big blue friend, then jump on a bus, be dropped off, new place, new city, just go in the local pub, order a beer and ask with a friendly smile ”I’m looking for a job! Anyone know of something coming up?” And, with the help of the friendly Australians, finding a job and a place to stay all in less than 20 minutes, with no stress, or, as they say in Oz, no worries!

I lived that way for two years, and it was great.
I met fantastic people around, real travelers, and I went through more than 40 different jobs!

I was picking mangoes and lychees, then hitting bananas leaves with a machete in a banana farm up in Queensland, night manager in a hostel in Sydney, polishing the brass in a Pub in the Outback, then working with an architect to help out the Metro building, or selling second hand frocks in Hobart.

Exploring a new continent, getting to know their faces and hear their voices, those of the people there, also getting to know the problems they have to face and how they deal with them, from Tasmania to the Kimberly, the green of the forests and the red the desert, with the company of kangaroos, parrots, crocks, spiders, snakes and penguins!

This life was not anything like the one that the hills of Piedmont could offer me.
In Australia I found love and tasted the freedom, and picked the nicest flowers ever…In Italy everything seems difficult…In Australia, everything seems possible!

So I started to do what I always wanted to do: writing. Now I have many stories to tell, and I like writing my tales, my poems, my haiku… I enjoy all that so much. I want to keep living abroad, and to keep discovering new things.
I am currently in Japan, not far away from Tokyo, among rice fields. I teach Italian and English and I enjoy it. I think I’m the first Italian teaching English in Japan, ever!

I came to Japan on a whim, and with a deep curiosity towards a country that fascinates loads of people, and many people talk about it without knowing all his deep contradictions and anomalies.
I came here without a job but I found one almost straight away! This doesn’t happen if you just sit down at home waiting for a job, you have to go for it in the country. No use to send your resume around, even if it is the greatest CV in the world. You have to go there in person, introducing yourself. All you need is a bit of savings, a lot of reading and a plan B just in case. For the rest, all that counts is to be in the right place at the right time! Take your chance and go for it. Play your cards right. And learn English! Not only to get the job, but above all to travel safely, communicate with all the people around the world, and read the news from the sources that count!

Travelling gave me the adventure I was chasing: I also gained the courage to do the right thing, and the pleasure of coming back home. It is always nice to go back to Italy for some time, it’s a lovely country.
But leaving that lovely country allows me to write about it!

This article was also featured at www.khiruna.com