4 Life Lessons I Gained from Living in a Dark Basement

After I moved into my dormitory in Germany for my year abroad, I cried. A lot.

I was sitting on the windowsill, staring at the grey wall which covered most of my view, and I thought, “Why me? Why do I always get the worst room?”

I know, I know. It sounds a bit pathetic. There are much more important things going on in the world right now. Then again, there will always be people who are in a worse situation than you — and truth be told, their problems don’t make yours disappear. They put them into perspective. They don’t solve them, though.

So let me vent about the problem that is my dark room and what mindset I’ve learned to adopt since moving here a month ago. There are some cool lessons.

You see, natural light is very important for me. It gives me an automatic boost of productivity, it makes me feel more grateful, positive, I wake up in a better mood. I’m very sensitive to darkness — my brain thinks it’s the night most of the time. And this room is a hell of a dark. However, not everything is black-and-white.

After breaking down in tears, I breathed through it, went to Ikea and made this room look so cool that everyone who walks in says, “Wow! I love that!”

Here’s what living in a dark basement taught me.

You can always make the best out of the worst situation

There’s you, and then there are circumstances that life throws at you.

Sometimes you can’t change those much (trust me, I did try to switch rooms but the woman on the phone only laughed, as if people asked her this question often — I wonder why — and said it wasn’t possible).

But as the famous psychologist Viktor E. Frankl, an author of the book Man’s Search for Meaning and a Holocaust survivor, said:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

When I read this at seventeen, I remember thinking, “Wow. That’s deep.” Four years later, it was time to apply it.

And so I did. I bought fairy lights after wanting them for ages and never finding a good enough reason to buy them (a pro tip: you never need a valid reason to buy fairy lights because the pure cliché romantic essence of fairy lights is the reason in and of itself to go for it), I hang up plants, I bought pillows for chilling on my windowsill, I printed out pictures to put on my walls.

And my room transformed. Yes, it’s still dark. Yes, I did buy a sun lamp and so far have been quite disappointed with it (it really just looks like a normal lamp, if you ask me). Yes, sometimes the darkness makes me want to bury myself in my blankets and never get out, especially when it’s raining.

But it all happens in a room that has pretty nice decorations. People wow and aah when they enter my room for the first time in my entire life, which surely counts for something.

In short, I turned one of the worst rooms I’ve ever had into the best-decorated one. I still live in a dark basement, but at least it’s a cool dark basement.

Things don’t need to be just so for you to be productive

I often want things to be perfect when I’m about to sit down to work. I want my desk to be clean, my cup of tea to be ready and steaming, my music to fit my mood, my clothes to make me feel relaxed but also professional.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Everyone has their own rituals which put them into their productive mood.

However, we should be able to adjust. Outer circumstances don’t have to dictate if we’re going to write today — you can write on a plane, at your desk or in your bed, for all that matters. What’s important is that you feel good, you do what you love and you have a blast with it.

Plus, if you’re trying to get something done every single day, the chances are that it’s not always going to be perfect, and that should be okay. I didn’t bring a cup of coffee before I set out to write this article. I’m wearing baggy clothes, my room is dark like always, the weather is autumn-like in the worst way possible and I’m acutely aware of the fact that I need to study soon (ugh).

But I’m writing, aren’t I? I’m working, I’m getting stuff done.

Honestly, the requirement for things to be just so before you sit down and work is usually just a part of procrastination. For me, anyway. If everything’s not perfect, why would I work? I can’t, I’m blocked, my mind isn’t clear enough!

Well, I’ve been writing almost every day for four months now and I can tell you one thing — usually, you discover everything you need to know the moment you actually start the task at hand.

Messy circumstances or busy schedules are not stopping you, as long as you prioritise what’s important and you throw the idea of perfectness out of the window.

Don’t use my window, though, because it’s literally on the ground. You wouldn’t throw very far.

Be grateful for the pros of your situation

Okay, so I don’t have the room I imagined.

But it’s quite big. I have great flatmates. We have a pretty big kitchen with a good working space. My bed is comfortable. I can open the window and hop out, ready to stretch or have a picnic underneath a tree.

I don’t have to pay for the electricity nor the internet, a perk of living in a dormitory. Woohoo!

There are always some perks about your situation, no matter how small they are. Focus on those. Embrace this situation as another step towards personal growth, towards becoming the person you wish to be.

Embrace challenges, things that kind of suck and opportunities to improve your situation by various means.

Humility helps a great deal. Life will not serve you everything on a golden plate. Sometimes, more often than not, you have to work for it. And that’s fine.

When you emerge from the situation a better person, you can be proud of yourself. Practise gratitude.

The ground is worth cherishing too

This is more metaphorical, but it’s worth noting.

As I was sitting on the windowsill (people in higher floors can’t chill on their windowsills because they’re not wide enough, so… I’m the winner, really) and watching the grass bend in the wind, I noticed how rich the ground was.

So much greenery, so much earth, so much effort to sprout out and keep growing, even when the circumstances aren’t favourable. You don’t get to see that in the sky.

There’s a quote by Wayne W. Dyer that goes like this:

“It’s never crowded along the extra mile.”

The farther you go, the more abandoned it gets, which makes it easier to go faster and achieve even greater things. This is a very inspiring way to look at life, I reckon.

But it’s also noteworthy that the way the ground is crowded is actually kind of beautiful. The higher up you go, the less life, richness and diversity there is. Furthermore, the ground is where we all start. No matter how high you end up, your roots are in the ground.

And the roots are what keeps you standing.

Let’s not forget where we come from and where we started. We would never get this far without staring somewhere.

Ideally, I don’t want to live in dark basements forever. All in all, the lack of light is not the best. But it’s liveable.

It’s a lesson. A challenge. And when I’m encountered with those, I usually just say one loud “Yes!” and go for it.

After all, hardship is often the fastest and most interesting way to grow. Even when it sometimes sucks.

This article was originally published on Medium.