Hi guys, it’s me again.

Last week I went to Romania to attend a summit, and honestly I think this trip affected me more than I expected. It was not only about going to another country or joining a program. Of course, travelling abroad is already something exciting, but this time the most important part was not the city, the buildings, or even the summit itself.

The most important part was the people.

Since I started going abroad, I don’t think I have ever met this many people from so many different countries in such a short time. I met friends from different parts of America, from South Africa, from Canada, from Germany, from England, and from many different countries in Europe. It was really strange in a good way, because normally we always hear that there are young people all around the world who share the same mission, the same vision, and the same worries. But hearing this and actually sitting with those people until late at night are completely different things.

This summit made that idea real for me.

I had the chance to talk with them for hours, sometimes very late at night, and then wake up early in the morning to continue the program. Normally this kind of schedule should make you tired, and of course it did, but at the same time it gave me a very different kind of energy. Because when you meet people who care about the same things as you, who are trying to improve themselves, who are thinking about the future, who are carrying a responsibility inside them, you start to feel less alone.

Maybe this is the biggest thing I brought back from Romania.

Sometimes we think our problems, our goals, our questions and our dreams belong only to us or to the small environment around us. But then you meet someone from the other side of the world and realize that he is also thinking about the same things. He is also trying to become better. He is also worried about not wasting his life. He is also trying to carry a mission bigger than himself.

That realization really changed my perspective.

There was also an incredible quality among the people I met. Some of them were studying at the best universities in America. Some of them were studying at Oxford. Some were doing master’s degrees in different fields and different countries. But the thing that impressed me most was not only their academic success. It was the seriousness in their eyes. It was the fact that they were not just collecting titles, schools, or achievements. They were trying to become people who can actually serve something meaningful.

I think this is very important.

Because sometimes when we talk about quality people, we only think about CVs, universities, degrees, and achievements. But after this summit I understood once again that real quality is not only about where someone studies. It is also about what kind of burden they carry in their heart. It is about what they wake up for in the morning. It is about whether they see life as something only for comfort, or as something that should be used for a bigger purpose.

And I saw many people who were not living only for comfort.

This made me question myself again. Am I doing enough? Am I disciplined enough? Am I really using my time correctly? Am I becoming the person I want to become, or am I just thinking about becoming that person?

I don’t know the full answer yet.

But I know that meeting these people gave me a new motivation. Not a temporary motivation like watching a random video at 2 a.m. and feeling powerful for ten minutes. I mean a deeper motivation. The kind of motivation that comes from seeing that the road you believe in is not an imaginary road. There are people walking on that road in America, in Africa, in Europe, in England, in Canada, everywhere.

And that is a very powerful thing to see.

Maybe before this trip, the idea of a global generation with the same mission sounded a little abstract to me. I believed it, but I had not really experienced it. Now it is not abstract anymore. Now I have faces, conversations, laughs, tired mornings, late night talks, and memories attached to that idea.

I think Romania will stay in my mind not just as a country I visited, but as a place where my worldview expanded a little more.

I came back with more questions, but also with more hope.

And maybe that is exactly what a good journey should do to a person.

Take care for now.

I.S.A