Land of the free and the estranged
As glorious as it can be, individual freedom comes with a price of detachment from others, our surroundings and the life itself
Coming to America continues to be a special event for many immigrants. The successful branding of it as the promised land has endured time and again more or less unscratched. Despite its problems, America still holds the allure of opportunity, possibility, magic.
I remember fantasizing about, not if, only to what unfathomable divine extent will it be awesome and enchanting to be a part of this extraordinary place.
But, like fears, fantasies are composites, the stories created by our minds out of multitudes of inputs we absorb, complete with the vivid details of an intricate novel. Whether we anticipated dread or excitement, when the reality inevitably hits we either feel relieved, let down, or anywhere on the spectrum between the two.
Anyone actively pursuing a change knows that with it there will be compromises. A deeply transformative experience such as the migratory may be one of the finest examples of playing the tradeoff game.
What’s interesting to observe is what those tradeoffs end up being, especially given the humans’ mostly poor record as the accurate emotional forecasters. What we may have predicted is often off, and some of what we haven’t seen coming, surprises us in both disappointing and lovely ways.
The little things
During my research with American immigrants from over 30 countries, I heard many inspiring stories of perseverance and great feats despite all odds. I couldn’t wait to dig into the juiciness of these people’s accounts of wins and loses after a lifetime of learning as a transplant in a different culture.
I was expecting profound wisdom and deep truths. Eventually they emerged, albeit not as conspicuously as I had thought they would and in a bit of a roundabout way.
When I asked immigrants what would they miss if they ever left America, at first all I got was the starry eyed affection for the utilitarian conveniences and comforts. Some of the examples seemed so trite that idolizing their supposedly immense value confused and almost annoyed me:
I like that in the US you can go to the bathroom nearly everywhere. It should oblige European countries to do the same. You get free water everywhere, coffee refills. Those are nice things. (Belgium)
Here if you order something from FedEx it’ll be there. Back in Cameroon… Lord have mercy! There is more sense of order and schedule here.
I’d miss the movie theaters, nice things like grabbing a cup of coffee. In Ghana you have to go for miles to get pizza.
Did they really cross the oceans, left their loved ones, their lives, the cultures that had shaped them, for pizza and an abundance of handy bathrooms to dispose of it? After these initial surface level answers threw me off, I dug deeper into the stories behind the adoration of fast courier services and unceasing coffee refills.
I’d tried a different angle and asked them about what they had not been missing from where they came from hoping to get closer to what was that something they were hoping to find to replace whatever they were willing to abandon. Sure enough, the profundity of leaving one’s homeland ensued through the moving accounts of fleeing violence, hunger, poverty, and oppression:
I don’t miss the violence in Brasil. When I lived there I was so used to robbers and street violence. I traveled back to Belem after living in Pittsburgh, and I was freaking out. I constantly had this feeling that something could happen to me. When I was driving I was paying attention to all the mirrors all the time, in case a thief riding a bike approached me to get my cellphone or money.
What I don’t miss from Ghana is the hunger. I have seen hunger, I have experienced it. My grandmother would put something on the firewood and cook all day. We couldn’t see what was in there and would ask her. She’d say, don’t worry, there will be food. All this time she was waiting for my grandpa to come back with a goat so we’d have something to eat.
I have a habit of leaving my lights on all the time. I’m not afraid of the dark but I can’t stand the lights being off. I have a feeling that with a flick of a switch I could go back to my childhood in Guyana, living in poverty, without electricity and I don’t want to conjure up those memories, so I just keep the lights on.
I don’t miss wearing a headscarf. I don’t believe in it. I am ok with my body and if you want to look at it, take a look, I don’t care. Sexuality is not taboo to me, we’re all human beings. While Iran is [less stringent] than what the western and Iranian media portrays it as, I still had to cover my hair.
Not all had fled such dire circumstances, but even the accumulation of smaller annoying cultural quirks can become draining. For most, the subtle workings of daily life go unnoticed. However, if the majority of it rubs the wrong way, those little things eventually compound and make the daily life seem like a succession of struggles. Wrestling with them becomes resisting that culture’s natural flow and wears out those who can’t help but feel like the outsiders in it:
I miss family and friends in Italy, not the way of life, the culture. At first I was even avoiding Italians here because I feel like they’re not my people. A lot of Italians seem to care for things I don’t care for at all, like fashion. Everyone dresses a certain way and if you don’t dress to the last season you’re not cool. I don’t care about that!
Being fair and respecting other people is what I care about and that’s not the case in Italy in many ways. Last summer I was at a deli in Italy. I got my number to wait for my turn, but a lady cut in front of me. I asked her why she was not using the number, but she didn’t care. She went on about her business and the owners acted helpless and didn’t care to get involved. That’s the kind of stuff that you have to fight for every day there. It makes me mad.
From the “trivial” complaints to the life threatening realities, the memories immigrants place in the dark corner of their past are various versions of a rough life they decided to replace with a better one. What all these hardships, big and small, have in common is some absence of order, respect and freedom.
Underneath those surface level expressions for appreciation of the American movie-theaters-and-bathrooms-galore lifestyle, there is a genuine appreciation for the beauty of the life’s simple comforts, pleasures, peacefulness.
Suddenly, exchanging pleasantries with your local deli guy, getting a gloriously greasy pizza in under 30 minutes, and that good ole FedEx package in all its cardboard luxuriousness become a small symbol of having made it and far from the minutia to be taken for granted.
Freedom, or what we all want
All the issues immigrants fled from, be it the quotidian rudeness of interactions, professional dead ends, to human rights violations fueled their quest for freedom. Freedom from all that stifles the human spirit and freedom to explore, learn, progress, work, improve, contribute, build, live.
Immigrants find relief and joy in America’s orderliness, strong institutions, way of life, a foundational belief in the power of the individual to create their own destiny, from the mundane daily routines to the major life quality upgrades:
What I like here is that if you want to start your own business it’s easier. In Belgium even if you want to open a bar you need a diploma for that. Over here, these things are a lot easier, they promote a lot more independence here.
If I ever moved from the US I would miss the freedom. Here I am independent with what I do. Even though India is better nowadays, people there still have the mentality that a woman is alone, and in need of help all the time. The men think that a woman cannot do anything by herself. Even though they know I’ve been here for over 20 years, raised kids by myself, got educated, run my own business, they still think I need help.
What America promises (and largely delivers) is the freedom from judgement and freedom to redefine yourself. Unencumbered by the past along with the labels cultures adhered to them at birth, immigrants find the freedom from judgement they encounter upon arrival to the States refreshing and uplifting:
I would miss most this feeling of freedom I have in the US. I never feel like I have to be a certain way. I just am. In Panama I have to behave a certain way with my uncles and aunts, certain ways in certain places. Otherwise people talk badly about you. That’s a big thing there, always looking for something outside of the norm to judge.
My husband has a long hair and tattoos which is not very common in Panama. I wasn’t trying to be rebellious but I broke the mold, unintentionally. I don’t miss that generally judgmental mindset in Panama and where the values are placed.
The acculturation and adjustment, often spanning a lifetime, is filled with the proverbial moments of truth when immigrants realize what they had lost by choosing to leave it behind. However, a life of an American immigrant is also a time of discovery of an untapped potential through the leaps and unpredictable turns in which the life in the new land changes them, helps them progress and become people they never thought they could become:
When I think of my life in America I feel triumphant, proud, happy about what my friends and family in Mexico and here think of me. The biggest reason why I decided to leave Mexico and live here is because I would see my mom cry when we wouldn’t have money to eat.
Now I get paid to teach people how to dance! To see everything that I went through and to see myself today and everything that I’ve done especially things I had no idea about, makes me proud of everything that I have accomplished, including my stumbles because I have learned from them.
The dark side of individualism
But of course, no place is perfect. The America’s freedoms come with paradoxes and costs:
Here, no one really looks at you, or judges you or asks you questions. It’s different in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Starting from your own household and your neighborhood you’re a part of that communal tissue. Here, you can isolate yourself from all that easily and redirect energy to other things that interest you. I’m a lot more productive here than there. Back there, I can’t open my computer without someone inviting me for a beer.
There are many good side to that way of life but I grew out it. Their sense of insecurity is much lower than ours for not having relatives around, family, friends you grew up with. Here, both the full freedom and responsibility are all on me. The loneliness, too. It’s a trade off.
To what is initially an exhilarating open season on chasing more and better and a welcome cultural shun of meddling, worshiping of individualism eventually comes with a price of an estrangement from others.
The rat race deprives us of the time and energy to share with others whatever grand things we’ve accomplished. The overt suspension of judgement during interactions no longer seems purely about the genuine respect for all people but also a way to conveniently hide ourselves behind the wall of our rehearsed smiles and scripted exchanges guarding us from a clearer view into seeing who we and others are.
Beautiful as it is, do we cherish our personal freedom and privacy to the point we’re ready to sacrifice for it a sense of togetherness with the people we share our lives and neighborhoods with?
Let’s recall the imagination derived exaggerated fears and fantasies from the beginning of this story. Being out of touch with each other makes ample space for inaccurate interpretations of what goes on in the minds and intentions of others and paves the way for those interpretations to morph into social insensitivity, treating human rights as privileges, and humans as mere peons.
People become merely a backdrop to our existence instead of an invitation to engage in the joy of sharing our lives with them. Ironically, living becomes a sterile structure in which all the little systems that make it up start becoming devoid of the common sense they were supposed to champion and the humanity they were supposed to serve:
Over here they are not really interested in your health, they’re more interested in your money. It’s always something, an extra procedure just to make sure everything is ok. Which is a lot of bs.
When I went to check on my back there was a nurse or someone who took my vitals, looked at my ears, eyes, took my blood pressure. I told them that I was ok, there is nothing wrong with me, aside from my back. Apparently it’s a standard procedure, but all these things cost money. It’s a bit weird and inefficient, a waste of time. (Belgium)
Like other social constructs, individualism disguises its dark sides under its seemingly simple and noble intent of everyone minding their own business. The overemphasis on the individualism often leads into isolationism and further into development of social norms with potentially serious consequences.
When we distance ourselves from each other, we no longer know each other. Our newfound ignorance and uncertainty breeds fear. And fear begets distrust, intolerance and baseless rejection. To protect ourselves from these largely imaginary threats, we compartmentalize and segregate others.
Racism is one typical and ugly product of the categorization mindset. Ironically, some of the dreadful disrespect and maltreatment immigrants fled from have found a a new way to haunt them in their new homeland:
I wouldn’t miss the crime I experienced here. If you are black and want to buy a house, you have to go where black people live. And when you go there you’re never safe. If you make good money you can get a better place to live but then the people around you don’t like you. They look at you thinking, what is he doing here? If you go to live on the black side, people bust in your house, rob you, shoot you down for things you worked hard for. It’s not safe, it’s rough. (Ghana)
Being distant from others can also easily prompt the estrangement from our environment, the nature. Closed up in our self-sufficient houses complete with our mighty gadgets responding to our every whim feed us an illusion of a fulfilling life. Yet, why is there still for so many of us a nagging curious feeling that not all is right with that picture.
What’s missing is a sense of living life fully. A society based on rules, schedules, and order brings the comfort of safety and reliability. However, an overly programmed life also brings with it the automaton-like drabness, the loss of common sense, the all-consuming obsession with productivity and isolation from our fellow humans and our human nature.
Connection makes freedom sweeter
Like immigrants, anyone who’s ever crossed any distance to start anew elsewhere, be it from one continent to another or from Pittsburgh to New York, would agree that what all of us are most nostalgic about is the warmth of our family, hanging out with friends, and the food; our fave childhood meals, indigenous delicacies, grandma’s pie:
There is not much here you can recreate. We get together with people here, but it’s not the same. When we get together in Ghana we crack jokes and laugh in the language you understand. It sounds different than in English. I miss that.
I miss the simple stuff like lavash bread. The proper kind is super thin. What’s here is bullshit, like pita. Also the cured meat basturma. I could find a recipe for these but lavash requires a fire pit. And can I cure meat in my basement for 6 months?
Sure, some of it is grieving the parts of the past life that are impossible to recreate authentically anywhere away from the origin. However, there is more to this seemingly whiney surface of the immigrant nostalgia.
What’s inherent in those moments they once experienced regularly and now feel torn away from is the connectedness to the people, the community, being there for each other:
I miss having family around, getting together. In India if anything happens people surround you if you are sick or in trouble. They cause you problems also, but help you too. And here I feel lonely, even when I just want to talk to someone, no one is ever around but busy with their lives.
I miss enjoying time with friends talking. You can get more personal, or say things I still can’t say to friends here. I feel there was more closeness and spontaneity in Peru. Here you have to schedule things, even hanging out. I miss how with spontaneity sometimes you enjoy things you were not expecting, the surprise.
Scheduling is necessary and beneficial to leading a productive life, and most immigrants embrace it as they embarked on their journey in search of it. But, when not dosed with control, preprogramming every little activity kills the spontaneity, one of life’s sweetest simple joys.
Too much structure, planning, organizing, coordinating takes away not only from our connection to each other but often extends to robbing us of our interconnectedness with the nature we need for sustenance and support:
I miss Kenyan food. It’s mostly organic, we mostly still raise our own chickens and cows. I miss my mango, a lot of memories… When you’re a child climbing the trees and picking them on your own. The freshness, the taste!
Mangos remind me of the togetherness with my friends, getting hurt together, the determination. As a girl you feel like you’ve achieved something because sometimes you’ve been told you can’t climb up a tree like the boys. That sense of achievement and knowing you’re going to share the mangos and still take a large chunk of it home with you and eat some.
Here you find them in a box. There, you shake the branch, they are not plucked because only the ones that are ready to be eaten will fall on the ground and you eat them immediately.
Simple pleasures and rituals with loved ones in the new land became endangered species. Parts of what used to be a way of life suddenly seems forced and so hard to carve out time for without feeling guilty, weird or wasteful for wanting to integrate it into the life’s flow.
The mostly consumerism driven American lifestyle does not allow for much relaxation and slowing down to enjoy life’s “frivolous” yet replenishing delights:
I miss the cafes. People here don’t understand the difference between a Target coffee shop and a cafe. Target coffee is not coffee. You have to have it in a nice cup and sit. In Iran, like here, I used to go to school and work, but then after 6 every day it’s time to hang out at a cafe.
I miss my traditional Mexican street taco stands that are open till 5 in the morning. I miss having fun there with friends, after we’ve gone out dancing. It was like reviewing what just happened. You relive it! You’re all together standing on the street talking about what just happened. You start laughing about it, poke fun at your friends, start planning the next week.
Embracing the flow of life (and working with what it brings)
What immigrants observe having been immersed in both (or multiple) cultures and ways of life, are pros and cons of each. One of the thought trends from my interviews that emerged as a common truth is that those cultures where people are more in tune with others and the environment they inhabit, derive strength from those connections, absorb the life’s uncertainties with more ease and become unafraid to let the life just — flow:
At the other end of the spectrum I see the laissez-faire attitude in Cuba. The organization and the order of things is very much American. I’d miss that but I’d probably assimilate back to the Cuban way because the downside to living here is that we’re driving ourselves crazy.
Rushing from one thing to another, we don’t enjoy life. We don’t just sit and breathe and take it all in and just live the simple joys of whatever the life has to bring.
Having had the opportunity to experience the good and the bad of the various places they’d lived in, what immigrants have to offer is valuable and unique expertise on living.
Despite the way their intentions, opinions and even their very presence can be misinterpreted as, the immigrant wisdom is a gift, not an attempt to corrupt their host land, rather the opposite: to participate and contribute to the collective creation of our shared world made out of the best of all of them out there:
There is a great advantage for all of us being here in America, this wonderful place. It means being a citizen of the world. We’re coming from different cultures, colors, backgrounds, religions to live in one space. We could be an example for everyone!
There is a huge opportunity for that but we’re missing on it being busy boxing the people by categories. Why? I am an American both for who I am and for the values and beliefs we share. We could celebrate both.
We need to start having this conversation of who we are, all of us together: not black, not white, not African, not American, but things that we share that make this place valuable. And in that shared humanity we can all come together. We could collectively try to find the answers. (Sudan)
We could. Instead of fences we could build connections, instead of walls, bridges. It takes listening to and learning from each other, working together, being open to understanding. May seem like a lot. But, what is the alternative? Slurping up whatever concoction politics-du-jour serve us? Settling for the inertia of ignorance before getting to know someone and their culture first hand? After all, isn’t giving ideas a go a lot of what gives life flavor and meaning? And, a handy way to practice our freedom.
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This post is a glimpse into the insights that emerged from my research on the immigrant experience in the US. I spoke to women and men who immigrated to the US from 33 European, African, South American and Asian countries. My one-on-one hour long exploratory interviews dove deep into how the immigrant experience impacts one’s beliefs, value system, worldview, patriotism, sense of identity and belonging.
If you are interested in a complete study report drop me a note at bergitabugarija@gmail.com
