One Small Step Before Dinner
Picture a woman named Imani who keeps a list in her head of things she cannot do. The list says she cannot leave her mother, sell the house, or start over at sixty. It has been the same for years.
One evening she asks herself which item she thinks about most. The answer is living abroad, and it is also the one she has never said aloud to anyone.
She decides on a step small enough to finish before dinner. She invites her sister to eat, and over the soup she says one sentence. I have been thinking about living in another country for a year.
Her sister does not answer for a while. Then she asks, where?
Imani does not know. That night she writes three countries on an index card and puts it on the refrigerator.
Nothing else has happened. She has not bought a ticket or decided anything. What has changed is that her sister knows and three countries are written down. The thing she was told she could not do is now something her sister knows about, and something with three names on a card.
The next week, she calls a friend who moved abroad five years ago and asks one question: what do you wish you had known? A month later, she sits down with the numbers for one country and puts them beside her own.
The size of a step matters more than its kind. It could be an email, a phone call, a number written on a page, or a refundable fare. It might be private, and it might be reversible. What counts is that it moves toward living abroad.
Considering can last for years without anything changing. A step changes one small thing.
You could pick the item on your own list that you think about most. You could ask what step would be small enough to finish before dinner, and what would make it reversible.
What is the smallest step you could take before dinner? Tell us in the comments. Someone reading may be looking for theirs.
Tell us in the comments