Notes on growth, geography, and grace

Maastricht

Maastricht is a beautiful city in Limburg, in the south of The Netherlands. It prides itself as being an international student city, with an impressive array of university faculties spanning both sides of the Maas river, and – important for students keen on realising a romanticized Pinterest-aesthetic uni-life – with study cafes sprinkled around every other cobble-stoned corner, where one can drink a daily espresso or latte or matcha, served with the always present complimentary cookie (“het koekje”).

What is it that attracts many Auroville students to Maastricht? No, not the coffee shops as they are currently defined in The Netherlands. Rather, it is The Netherlands’ reputability of its high-quality, world-ranked English-led university programmes, as well as their notable ranking in global happiness and quality-of-life indexes – after all, students need some sort of insurance to counter the stress and sufferance that are a promised package (or)deal to the ultimate student experience one pays thousands of euros to undergo.

It is well-known in Auroville that Dutch universities, especially University College Maastricht (UCM) known as a top Liberal Arts and Sciences Honours College, is a popular location for Future School alumni – particularly for those who have European passports. However, as a non-European citizen who would have to pay preposterous fees, I applied to several scholarships from different Liberal Arts and Science programmes (suitable for those who want to study but don’t know what to study). Yes, I chose the university, but the university-scholarship also chose me.

From UCM, I received a full-ride need-and-merit-based scholarship (discontinued the year after my year graduated). The scholarship covered tuition, visa, healthcare, and provided housing and a monthly stipend of 500 euros. It was awarded only to five non-EU students a year, and I was one of them! Oh the glee, the immense gratitude to luck, and a sense of validation that I was perhaps, in some ways, extraordinary.

What was the secret to receiving the scholarship? On top of excellent grades, my motivation letter glamorised my unique childhood. Beyond my multicultural background (Korean mother, Israeli father, born in India, raised in the international, experimental township of Auroville), I emphasised the various disciplines I pursued: choir, piano, guitar, Odissi, tango, fire-spinning, gymnastics, swimming, horse-riding, and whatever else I had dabbled in for at least a significant number of years. I cherry-picked and framed a very particular image: a diverse, talented, over-achieving, autonomous individual, cultivating qualities of leadership, team-work, discipline, and creativity, thriving and productive in a variety of settings, eager to soak up and create knowledge and output.

Following my receipt of the scholarship were the glory months wherein I basked between the best of both worlds – Auroville’s stability, freedom, and safety of family and friends, the familiar environment where I had some forms of spotlights (teacher’s pet in high school, performer in fire spinning and Odissi, etc.), and the euphoric expectations and imaginations of a life beyond my mould in Auroville – the nerdy, introverted, shy, not particularly popular or exciting girl. Oh, how I would re-invent myself in Maastricht with a mass of friends and a romanticised envied life!

There is a psychological theory that the relative difference between expectations and reality, rather than one’s absolute reality, has a far more significant effect on one’s happiness and well-being. I lived first-hand through the confirmation of this hypothesis. From being one of the best of my class doing average study work, I was average in my class doing my best. I was a soloist in Auroville’s choir, but my voice cracked on every note in the audition in Maastricht – and in the re-audition I pleaded they grant me. From a built-in network of childhood friends and family, to a devastating loneliness with an unknown expiry date and a threat that it could stretch forever if I didn’t actively make an effort. And boy, was I making an effort, but attempting small talk to fill in silences is a circular form of purgatory as one performs the same conversation with a rotating cast of people with no real interest in how many siblings they have, and whether they lived in France or Belgium or Germany (“Frankfurt? How fascinating! Tell me more!”) was just a dull, shallow soup of information.

It would have been easier if at least one thing had been going well – academically, socially, emotionally, physically – something. But no, studying was not linear (i.e. the amount of time one studies and puts in work did not produce a proportional response in output and grades) and it was overbearing (one had several hundred academic pages to read a week for courses, plus assignments/essays/exams every 3-4 weeks); I was socially and emotionally lonely with no real skill or experience in making new friends and an insecurity that my introverted personality and undramatic life made me a boring person; and all the stress and sudden adjustment to this new, intimidating environment and Europe’s looming winter caused me to be frequent ill, which only further reinforced the debilitation of my academic, social, and emotional life.

Could I give up Maastricht and return to Auroville? It crossed my mind a number of times. There was just one caveat: it wouldn’t solve my problems.

I craved a life in Auroville that belonged firmly to the past: I could not return to high school after I had graduated; most of my friends were dispersed across the country or the globe; I had a reputation for discipline, perseverance, success – how could I return a ‘failure’, giving up my lottery-like scholarship, because I was too weak to handle life abroad? If/when I return to Auroville, it is because I make a willing choice to, not because there is no other choice. I am not someone who will return to Auroville simply because it is the easy thing to do, because it is home, because it is a safety net. I have no interest in being an Aurovilian until I am ready to realise that title.

Thus, I was stuck in Maastricht because there was no alternative.

Thank the universe there was no alternative.

I pushed through endless days of mental breakdowns and phone calls home, glued myself to potential friendships on a day-to-day basis fighting against them petering out; I familiarised myself with and normalised the academic workload, rubrics and expectations; I got accepted in the choir in the second semester. Once I survived the base levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Maastricht edition, I could promote myself to enjoying the city as it should be enjoyed.

Maastricht is a fairytale charmed to life with pristine, postcard-perfect streets, five beautiful bridges, burbling rivers, and lush parks – verdant, floral, autumn palette or skeletal depending on the season. It is especially lovely that Maastricht is a pedestrian city; you haven’t lived there long enough if your bicycle hasn’t been stolen at least once.

I admit, Dutch winters are dark and chilling, (forcing yourself out of your duvet at 7.30am for a morning lecture/tutorial is a daily form of torture during the colder months) – but the strings of light bannering streets, the Christmas baubles floating in trees, windows lit up with buttery light, the Vrijthof Christmas market circulated with the scent of deep-fried Olliebollen – are a fair compensation.

So what next? Was life all rose-gold? Here are a few of my favourite challenges I encountered: I was under risk of being kicked out of university when a close friend plagiarised my paper and the university authorities didn’t know who had copied who; I got my phone stolen (twice) and my laptop, keys, ID, and wallet (once); thesis was a nightmare amount of stress; and let’s not forget when our overstaying guest, Corona, paid us all a visit in her world trip. I think we are universally familiar with those years.

I’ll close Maastricht with a final memory of climbing Mount Saint Peter, known by the Dutch as Sint-Pietersberg – the only ‘mountain’ in The Netherlands with a height of 171 meters – to watch the rose-gold sunset spill on the skyline, invoking every last bit of Maastricht’s peace and beauty.

Israel

After 3 years of an intense bachelor’s degree focused on economics, math, and sustainability, and a gap year (also in Maastricht), I wanted to continue studying, but a subject for my soul. Bar Ilan University offered an English MFA programme in creative writing, and by making Aaliyah to Israel (immigration of a new or returning citizen), my tuition fee would be covered (my luck with scholarships had dried up for UK and American programmes). It was also a chance to connect with family I’d only visited in summer vacations, regrasp the language, and immerse myself in the culture that makes up half my genetics.

The summer before my university started, I visited Auroville for a month and South Korea for two weeks. My flight was from Seoul to Tel Aviv, with a transit in Warsaw on 8 October, 2023. On 7 October, my father called me from Ashkelon, Israel.

“No one knows the full details yet, but there was a terrible massacre like never before. You can’t come to Israel.”

He was staying in Ashkelon, Israel, in his mother’s house with his sister and nieces. He sent me a picture from the balcony: a landed missile 500m away, blazing flames gorging on cars, a thick trunk of solid black fumes rising up to penetrate the sky.

And it wasn’t over. Hamas were roaming the streets and every citizen of Israel was told to be on house lockdown until further notice. I imagined the missile landing on my grandmother’s house; I imagined Hamas infiltrating her apartment; I imagined if someone I knew had been killed or kidnapped, and I texted the Israeli Aurovilians I knew were in the country, all the while thinking, “it could have been you. It could have been someone you know. The danger isn’t over”.

There is an immense amount of sadness, and a twisted sense of gratitude that it wasn’t someone I knew who was murdered or kidnapped; that it wasn’t my grandmother’s house – housing most of my family – that had been bombed. The immeasurable amount of anxiety and worry I spent on my family would be unbearable if it solidified to grief. I inundated my father with texts, and if he didn’t answer within 5 minutes, my imagination overreacted.

“Daniel, I can’t be on my phone when I’m sleeping. Let me text you if there are any changes.”

He told me to first focus on my immediate reality. Like, where do I go? I was very fortunate to have family and friends in Europe. From Warsaw, I booked a ticket to Madrid where my stepmother graciously and generously hosted me, before I spent a month in Maastricht. The next question was: what do I do now that my Israel plans are disrupted?

It is difficult to translate the emotions and thoughts I lived through at the time. There are myriad layers of reality to peel through. With regards to the immediate future, I thought about myself. What do I do about university? Is Israel still an option? Why is the rent for my 1-year contract dorm being sucked out of my bank account every month whilst there is a war? What do I do with my life? Am I wasting it every day that I don’t make a concrete decision and plan? If I apply to a university in Belgium (which I started doing as a backup plan) that would still only start next year. What do I do this year? I was hanging around as a visitor in Europe – it wasn’t my life. Truly, I felt a deep restlessness and earnest craving to stabilise and anchor my life, working at personal progress and development; I felt like a ghost lingering in Europe, unable to host any corporeal form, and thus unable to do anything meaningful.

On the other hand: none of that matters. If you are physically healthy and safe, your worries are first-world problems. It is easier to remember that when disaster and danger is at your doorstep, or your family’s doorstep. It is easy when one recalls the ongoing trauma of Israelis of 7 October and its consequences, and the daily traumas of Gazan civilians facing famine, destruction, and traumatic grief that no civilian should go through.

Time-skip to December and the university informs me that the first semester begins at the end of the month. Now I really needed to make a decision: study in Israel amidst a war and an atmosphere of suffering, or linger aimlessly through life for a year?

There was a lot of indecision and hesitation. I talked to many people in Israel to gauge how life was there. I don’t know that I have rational answers to the decision I made – there are some choices in life that cannot be logically explained through words and arguments; you let your intuition and instinct guide you. I can say that I do not regret my choice to move to Israel to study.

Of course, there are an incredible number of challenges, and one can compress them into the question: how can one live in a place where so many contradictions are realized?

The news is constantly on the war, social media on the daily horrors lived by Gazan civilians, the streets are pasted with the faces of the kidnapped, and the sirens have become a too-familiar sound. At the same time, I am able to make new friends, go out for lovely dinners, buy lattes and attend my lectures. As an English major in university, I may also enroll for free in the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certificate programme to be an English teacher. My teacher teaches us how to teach English as a second language. She also asks about us and our life, and she tells me I am welcome to talk to her about anything – it must be hard to adjust to this new country; I am always welcome at hers for Shabbat dinners whenever I feel like. I don’t even really know her, but that is the hospitality of Israelis.

Sometimes during her lessons, she mentions the time and place of the next protest for the hostages to demand of the government a ceasefire deal and an end to the war, or asks us to take a minute of silence for them. She always has a yellow ribbon pinned to her clothing, the symbol to call for the release of the hostages, even as she teaches us the difference between the first and second conditional; even as she humorously role-plays a student with an attitude whilst one of us role-plays the teacher and diffuses the classroom situation.

“But you know her daughter’s fiancée was murdered on October 7th, bullets riddled through his body with his last moments clutching his mother. You know her best friend’s cousin was kidnapped and is currently in Gaza,” says my classmate a few months later.

No, I didn’t know. Because how can that be a reality for my teacher and she still has the strength to come to class and teach us trivial things like gamifying the present simple into ‘Guess Who’? But I realized – my teacher isn’t special. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who lost a family member or friends – not only in Israel, but also in Gaza. It’s a hierarchy of hell; are we all suffering being in a country where we need to run to bomb shelters every other day? Not as much as those who need to endure their own losses, and those they are grieving for.

I feel a certain net of safety with the shelters and the Iron Dome; the same cannot be said for those living in Gaza. With every bomb that rains down landing, it is impossible to fathom the lived experience for whom this is a first-hand reality, prolonged for years.

A harrowing truth of the world is that trauma and atrocities, in Israel or Gaza or elsewhere, will test humans to draw on a certain inner strength, and remind humanity that humanity still exists. My English teacher is the only person I’ve met first-hand who has touched my heart. I also know there are countless people, in Israel and Gaza, who must do the same. These figures of hope, who could so easily cave to the outside world forcing zero-sum game polarisation, hatred, and selective sympathy – because that’s the easy thing to do – instead turn to empathy and peace for all as driving solutions, and continue to do their bit in making the world a better, more compassionate place.

It is these people who inspire me to draw on my own inner strength and empathy, to not be swept up in the extremist polarisations taking over the world, and to recognize humanity in humanity behind social, moral, cultural, and racial appearances.