The return to the office: A reflection from someone who has migrated several times...

There are moments in life where we’re asked to adapt, again. Many industry colleagues today are processing news about a future return to the office and I understand the mixed feelings. Change is uncomfortable. It disrupts plans, families. It forces us to reframe routines that we’ve built.

I say this with full empathy because I’m a migrant. In 2017, I had to leave my country not because it was a personal choice, but because there were almost no opportunities to build a dignified future in Venezuela. I left my country without a dollar, trying to support my family from abroad and since then, I have had to reinvent myself in three different countries.

We’ve built a life again and again. We’ve adapted to different cultures, systems, ways of working. I learned that sometimes you don’t choose the change, the change chooses you.

And I also learned something else: We are free to choose! Because I could have chosen not to leave my country, I could have stayed, who knows what I’d be doing now. But I made the decision to move and I don’t regret it for one second.

A migration teaches you a level of resilience that few things in life can teach. So yes, returning to an office two or three days a week is a change. It’s a logistical challenge if you have made your life around remote work. It can be emotionally heavy for some. I know what it means to letting go of your family, friends, compared and restarting your identity in a new city and/or country…But let’s not only look at the glass half empty. Just like migrating, these transitions also come with positive upside: reconnecting with new people and their culture, building stronger bonds, expanding your mind to new concepts, exposing yourself to new opportunities, expanding your network, opening doors you didn’t even know existed.

Not all decisions we take in life reveal their benefit immediately. Some only make sense when you look backwards. Over the last 12 years, I’ve lived in four different cities and three countries. Every move felt uncomfortable at first and every move ended up expanding my life.

So this is just a humble reflection, from a migrant to anyone facing change:We have been capable of bigger transitions before and we will be capable of this one too.

Often the right path is the one that may be hardest for you to follow. But the hard path is also the one that will make you grow as a human being.