Understanding Myself Better

This semester I got to think a lot about my background, identity, and my place in the world. Specifically, I got to consider the various ways my upbringing as a Third Culture Kid shaped my worldview and lifestyle, from issues such as my sense of home/belonging to things like what books and movies I enjoy. I had long considered other factors that contribute to my identity: how being a middle child has contributed both to my independence and my indecisiveness, how being a pastor’s kid both hurt and helped my process of finding my own faith, and to some extent how being a missionary kid shaped my outlook on life. Certainly I had made specific connections, like how living in Tanzania, a third world country, had made me appreciate what I have, and made me feel somewhat annoyed at the constant complaining of many Americans over comparatively privileged issues. Living in Ireland, a smaller country with a rich history and lighthearted, tight-knit people taught me to value community and to think of the good of the collective, which made me feel sorrow at the seeming lack of local community in larger American cities and the overwhelmingly individual-driven way of thinking.

But I had not thought much of or realized the developmental effects of growing up in a highly-mobile way that was shared by many with my background–TCKs as I later learned we were called. Upon entering college, I met a couple others like me and found closer kinship with them than I had for anyone in a long time. And then when I went to study abroad in Japan, it was there that a missionary friend of mine pointed me toward TCK research, as he had been reading up on it to see how best to raise his own children amidst the trials of international life. And so it has only been the past year that I have really been looking at things through the TCK lens.

I feel that doing so has really helped me to understand myself a little better, as I recognize my own patterns when looking at the TCK Profile, and I also understand better why I feel such strong kinship with my fellow ATCKs. Perhaps most importantly, thinking things through this way has helped me to feel more at peace about my idea of home and my sense of belonging in the world. Of course, I still feel somewhat restless, and have a feeling that I won’t be able to settle in the States for certain, but despite the absence of a permanent, physical home, I feel assured in my sense of a spiritual and emotional home with Christ and the Church, as well as the security of knowing I can still go back to my family if ever I need–the people that constituted the only constant in my young life.

I no longer feel pressured to decide on a city, country, or even continent to call home, nor do I feel quite as flustered when asked where I am from. On the physical side of things, I have many homes, and I have no home, and that’s alright–that’s good enough, and I’m good enough. I don’t need to be an American, Tanzanian, Irish, or anything else–I am me: an internationally-reared global nomad. I feel at peace with that, and even a little excited about it. I am sure I will still suffer moments of longing, of feeling culturally homeless, restless and rootless, out of place–but that’s okay. I know who I am and where I belong, and though I may not always feel it, to know is enough. I can hold onto that. Even when I feel like a stranger or a foreigner, that’s okay–there is nothing wrong with being either of those things. I don’t need to assimilate to American culture, nor any other–though of course I believe in respecting the culture of wherever I may be. But the fact that I don’t fully share in that culture does not discount me from belonging there.

That is only part of what I feel I’ve learned about myself this semester, but it is a large and important part. It feels like a large burden has been lifted off of me in a sense. Because after seven years back in the States, feeling out-of-place, unwanted, unwelcome, foreign, and strange the whole time, I at last think I can see my place in it, and in the world at large. Because I realize I don’t have to squeeze myself into the boxes America presents me with, I am free to live in the open air, knowing that I am what I am and there are even others like me who share my experience and can understand my struggle. And if I have my own kids and they grow up internationally and cross-culturally as well, I can feel assured knowing that they will be alright, and may even have an advantage in the ever globalizing world.