#letterstomy40self

Living Fully

When I came to Bangalore after my Masters in Italy, my life changed in very ordinary ways before it changed in any grand ones. I got a job. I learned how to manage my food. I learned how to cook for myself, how to plan my days, how to build a rhythm that didn’t already exist for me. There was excitement, but there was also confusion. There were days that felt empowering, and days that felt quietly overwhelming.

But somewhere along the way, Bangalore became more than just a city I lived in. It became the place where I learned how to experience life fully.

This city has a strange openness to it. You can be whoever you are in that phase of your life and still find a corner that accepts you — through people, workshops, music, conversations, cafés, communities, or even brief encounters that stay with you longer than expected. It gave me permission to try, to fail, to restart, and to keep going without having to explain myself too much.

What Bangalore really taught me was something deeper: that life doesn’t have to be about being happy all the time. Especially in your late twenties and thirties, there’s something profoundly important about allowing yourself to feel the entire range of emotions. Joy, loneliness, curiosity, disappointment, excitement, grief, freedom — all of it. A full life isn’t a smooth one; it’s a textured one.