Stranger in a Strange Land

Tonight, I heard a writer speak about how her travels to assorted countries led her to create books for children.
 
Okay, that is a huge oversimplification of her talk. She had written before her travels, and it was more than just the travels that caused her to create the books and work to get them published. Her message, however, was that when you are in a place where everything you experience--language, culture, food, daily life--is new to you, you are more able to open yourself up to seeing things and to taking the risks needed to make yourself heard.
 
As I walked home on a street I'd rarely walked, I thought a lot about her talk. While I haven't traveled (and am unlikely to travel) to the places she has, or to anyplace nearly that exotic, I have walked into new situations a lot in the past few years, and the world being how it is, will likely walk into a bunch more. Have I, I wondered, used those new experiences to see more, hear more, experiment more?
 
Certainly, there have been places where I have been too "deer in the headlights" to do anything more than survive. Yet, there have also been places where what she said was true--where being a stranger allowed me to experiment, to try new things, to test my abilities. And to generate work and skills I might never have found, had I stayed in one place.
 
It's scary to be a "stranger in a strange land." For her, that included communication in languages she did not speak. While few of us may have that experience, any new place does come with "language immersion" of sorts. We can choose to be silent, or we can choose to turn being a stranger into the greatest inspiration for developing our talents. "Stranger" experiences are out there everywhere, particularly in a world where work and life can change daily. It's up to us to turn them into experiences that make us feel at home--and comfortable and uncomfortable enough to risk and grow.