On Confidence, Solitude, and the Quiet Courage of My Students

Reading my students’ essays today has left me feeling existential. Their words, their struggles, their dreams—they all sit with me. Many of them dream of travel, of seeing the world beyond Bhutan. But what strikes me most is how many of them aspire to something I’ve never thought twice about: the confidence to walk into a restaurant or café alone, to order a coffee, to sit with themselves.

It’s a quiet kind of courage, one I’ve taken for granted.

For the past 22 years, I’ve lived as a nomad, moving from country to country, city to city. Sitting alone in a café, watching the world move around me, has always been my preference. It’s where I feel most at home. I’ve never needed to summon the courage to do it—it’s simply who I am. But for my students, it’s a milestone, a step toward self-assurance, toward independence.

And that humbles me.

It reminds me to never take my freedom for granted. The ability to move through the world with ease, to find joy in solitude, to sit alone without questioning my place—these are privileges, built on years of experience, maybe even an innate confidence I never had to develop.

But for my students, confidence isn’t always innate. It’s something they reach for. And I see that in their writing, in their longing to step beyond their comfort zones, in their quiet dreams of sitting in a café alone, ordering a meal without hesitation.

It makes me wonder: When did something so small, so ordinary to me, become an act of bravery for them?

Maybe that’s the lesson for today. What we take for granted might be someone else’s mountain to climb. And what we see as effortless, others might see as courage.

Thimphu, Bhutan, February 2025