Photo taken in Strasbourg, France
Student and Teacher
During my second year teaching English in Prague, Friday mornings became something I actually looked forward to—not just because they marked the end of the week, but because of my 8:00 a.m. lesson with one student in particular.
This student was a Czech man in his late forties who worked in a high-level role at a mobile company. He had this quiet confidence about him, always put-together in that effortless kind of way.
We’d spend an hour and a half each week improving his English through real conversations—about politics, philosophy, world news, and whatever else came up. His progress was steady. But honestly, a lot of the time, it felt like I was the one learning the most.
Even though I was technically the teacher, I kept feeling like the real student in the room. Looking back, it’s still surreal to me—this young, idealistic American from the West Coast, sitting across from an older man from a small Czech town, swapping stories and ideas that shaped us both.
A Shared Regret
One morning, he told me about a recent chat he had with some friends, colleagues, and family. Many of them had done well in their careers. But a common regret kept coming up: not having lived abroad.
You could feel the weight of it in the way he said it—like it really stuck with him. I tried to lighten the moment by pointing out all the things he had done: the places he’d traveled, how easy it is to hop around Europe from Prague.
But he shook his head. That wasn’t the point. He wasn’t talking about vacation. He meant actually living in another country, especially when he was younger, when it could’ve shaped who he became.
I hadn’t really thought about how much the timing of that kind of experience matters. I always figured it was valuable at any age. But after that talk, I started to wonder: maybe the impact does hit differently when you’re young.
How many people out there are walking around with that exact same regret?
The Power of Regret
In his book The Power of Regret, Dan Pink says regret is the most common negative emotion we have—and the second most common overall. It’s that weird ache you feel when you wish you’d made a different choice.
I used to brush regret off. I figured if you can’t change the past, why dwell on it?
But Pink offers another perspective. If you reflect on it the right way, regret can actually help you make better choices, push yourself, and feel more connected to others.
He asks this question: “What would you regret not doing at this stage in your life?” That stuck with me.
Because before I moved to Prague, I didn’t know anyone there. I hadn’t even been to the country. But something in me said, go.
And looking back, I can’t imagine who I’d be if I hadn’t. In The Power of Regret, Dan Pink writes:
“A look at the research shows that regret, handled correctly, offers three broad benefits. It can sharpen our decision-making skills. It can elevate our performance on a range of tasks. And it can strengthen our sense of meaning and connectedness.”
Why Living Abroad Matters
Living abroad is a strange mix of hard and beautiful. At first, everything feels unfamiliar—disorienting, even. But if you can sit with that discomfort, it slowly becomes something else.
You start to see the world with new eyes. You notice things more, how people speak, what they eat, how they move through daily life. And before you know it, you start to feel like you belong.
The conversations you have, whether quick chats or long debates, start changing how you think. You take on new habits. You start to realize how different, and how similar, we all really are.
And that right there is the quiet magic of it: noticing how much we share across cultures, and feeling your worldview expand with every moment.
A Global Perspective
There’s a certain kind of energy that comes with being surrounded by people from all over. It doesn’t matter if it’s in a pub, a hostel, or a late-night tram ride—something about it just lights you up.
You end up talking with people from everywhere—Spain, Hungary, Australia, the UK. And those conversations? They’re rarely surface-level. They make you check your assumptions. They remind you of how much of what you thought you “knew” came from movies or news headlines.
I found myself asking questions like, “Wait, is that actually true where you’re from?” or “Do people really think that about us?” Most of the time, we’d end up laughing and learning at the same time.
In hindsight, I realize how much healing happened in those moments. We were letting go of old ideas, choosing curiosity over judgment, and slowly stitching together a better understanding of each other.
We were just a bunch of strangers trying to make sense of the world—and in the process, we ended up seeing ourselves a little more clearly too.
Finding Ourselves
I think about my former student’s words a lot. Living abroad in my twenties wasn’t just about seeing new places—it was about finding myself in the middle of all that unfamiliarity.
And I wasn’t alone. So many of us—young, unsure, hopeful—were doing the same thing. Taking a leap. Leaving behind comfort and familiarity to try something harder, and maybe, more meaningful.
We weren’t just traveling. We were building something. A life. A sense of purpose. A deeper way of seeing. And in some quiet, stubborn way, we were proving that youth doesn’t have to be wasted—not if you choose to live it with intention.
