The Cost of Global Citizenship
Explaining who we are and where we are from used to be easy. Parents, home town, high school, sports club. Collectively, these communities we’re part of help define ourselves, making up our identity. When we grow up, we go to work or study in different towns or countries, form relationships across continents and may end up living in numerous languages. If our experiences are not just shot stints, we integrate and adapt rapidly in order to belong, to be part of this new group of people. Unconsciously, this new community becomes an increasingly important reference point and informs our decision of how we define ourselves.
Some of these new groups may take precedence over our ‘old’ allegiances. After all, it’s more useful (and accurate) to define ourselves as a (enter big university name) graduate than playing sports in a (imagine small rural town). At an early stage, all communities of reference tend to have one thing in common — location. Which suggests that who we think we are is strongly linked to our sense of place, to where we think we belong. So what do you do if the place you grew up in suddenly has little to do with who you feel you are? Suddenly the question of ‘Where are you from?’ has so many connotations, it’s hard to answer it in one word.
My dad is from Egypt, my mum from Germany — fleeing from East to West in her early teens. I grew up in Germany but spend my ‘formative years’ (my 20s) living in the Netherlands and the UK, where I met my partner — he’s from New Zealand. I speak four languages and have, at one point, lived and ‘belonged’ in all of them. National identities no longer suffice to determine who I am or which country I associate with. In fact I find geo-identity quite useless when navigating my world. Belonging to a country isn’t relevant in defining myself or understanding others. Yet, it’s such a common reference point, it’s bound to come up in conversation.
Just over a year ago my partner and I decided to pack everything up (for the fourth time) and go travelling. When someone asks me where I’m from I tend to say Germany, never mind I haven’t lived there for over 10 years but it’s still ‘home’, and an easy answer. Sometimes, this confuses people, as I just don’t fit the tall, blond & blue eyed stereotype. Ahh, genetics! Oh, and my surname, yeah… So it’s easier to make something up, or use my covert ID — I’m a New Zealander. That makes sense to people because my partner is Kiwi, it’s the last country I lived in and the visual preconceptions about how a Kiwi ‘should’ look simply aren’t there. So when we are together, we say we’re from NZ. Five years ago the answer would have been London.
I always dreamed of the life I have: jet-setting around on my own schedule, meeting people from all over the world, having an international education, a career path that I am passionate about, not being confined by one language that determines who I can and can’t talk to. But while all of these are privileges I worked for and (don’t get me wrong!) I by all means enjoy, this lifestyle comes with a hefty price tag.
Where the heck is ‘home’?
Where you are from (implying that this is where you belong and also infers certain character attributes) is fundamentally more complex than for someone who’s always maintained a permanent base, even if they are well traveled. It’s also more transient, changing with every move. Each place you choose to settle in and call ‘home’ for a while brings with it their own cultural norms and opportunities that reflect a different light on you. Within a matter of months, your conceptions about yourself have evolved. What was important to you a year ago can seem utterly irrelevant today — you’ve just discovered a new side of yourself. Each place you live in changes you a little bit so to single out one place that shaped you seems terribly inadequate.
It can make you feel lost at times when everybody around you is (implicitly) clear on what defines them and what they want, while you’re flailing. How can they be so sure when there are so many different ways to live? Sometimes it just gets you, because frankly, to have a geo-identity is expected and comes with a ton of connotations that helps people place you.
A constant sense of belonging
You need to be OK with being lonely sometimes. On bad days, your Facebook timeline can be seriously depressing because it doesn’t validate all the great things you do, but reminds you of all the great things you are missing out on. You can’t be at a friend’s wedding in the UK and at one in Sri Lanka at the same time. You can’t go to an event to meet with a group of old friends in New Zealand and be there for your brother’s graduation in Germany simultaneously. They sound like first world problems (because they are) but what you are trading in is the bond you have with a set of people you interact with face-to-face on a regular basis. To permanently belong. You are missing out on important events that build and maintain relationships. Even if you love those people dearly, and they remember all the great things you used to do together, over time, memories fade if not reinforced.
Your pool of friends is shrinking, and it’s harder to find new ones
You experience a lot but the more exciting things you see and do, the less people are there to share it with. Fewer people will want to do or have an interest in doing what you are doing. People at ‘home’ still care about you, but with a decreasing shared experience base, what you’re doing is completely foreign, and hence uninteresting, to them. Every traveler you’ll ever meet will tell you that. Your next work place may downgrade your application or reduce the salary offer for lack of national experience — never mind that if you have done your job in 3 other markets, it’s likely you’ll succeed in the 4th one, too.
Fitting in
You develop your own set of standards, picked from your rich history of experiences. They work for you but the sheer number of sources makes it harder to refit your thoughts and actions into one rigid cultural framework. The way you eat, the way you assess appropriate dress or behavior — there are so many options of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’!
Preexisting narratives and behaviors require you to give up or ‘pause’ some of your new found preferences, or risk causing offense. The more colorful your cultural collage, the more difficult the fit. Unless, of course, you’ll meet people who are a little bit like you and (un)consciously cutting and pasting an abstract pattern of behavior and values may seem familiar rather than absolutely nuts!
