Would you mind sharing your reactions to these events or your thought processes?
Sure, but lest you think me too evolved, I should put it in context. Ten years before spending time in Vanuatu I had a brief expatriate love affair with Japan. It did my head in, but left me cosmopolitan, worldly-wise and sophisticated (just ask me - I'll tell you. :D)
It's not visiting to another culture that does your head in. It's immersing yourself there; trying to find that part of it that you want to call home.
There's no getting around it. We don't just need to survive in a place; we need to feel that we are valued, respected, welcomed and belong. Until we feel that, we create a sphere of our native culture around us. It entraps and stifles us; creates friction, cognitive dissonance. We want to escape our cultural blinkers but there's no place safe to escape to.
Meanwhile, one part of our mind is trying to accept, accommodate, welcome. Another part is simply trying to adapt, camouflage, survive. A third part is snarling like a wolf (hence my pic above), trying to keep the threats away until we feel safe. There's no reconciling these three parts; they each claim their own turf. The longer we know we're staying, the more these parts fight.
In Japan, I was enormously judgmental, contemptuous, brittle. I was less than my best as a person. But at the same time I was striving more than I ever had before, to accommodate, accept and support. I was also becoming - in some part of me at least - Japanese. Although it wasn't my native culture, I discovered that everything they did differently had resonance in a part of me. That part grew. I learned more about respect, humility, sacrifice and kindness then than I had in all the years since I was a child. Not because the Japanese were better at these things, but because they helped take some of the distortion out of the mirror of my own self-reflection. It made me question and take new decisions from a broader perspective.
Looking back, I realise that much of the fighting I did was against myself, against seeing a clearer reflection. The Japanese weren't pushing me. My conflict was internal.
When I visited Vanuatu I did what I always try and do when visiting another culture - I rolled my sleeves up, dived in, swam in the soup and drank it. But this time I knew that it would be an expatriate romance with all of the tumult that this caused. I was ready for that, rejoiced in the bittersweet of it, laughed at my own conflicts and frustrations.
What Vanuatu taught me was that you could have joy, fun, belonging without the trappings of comfort, affluence, prestige - or even kindness and compassion. You can simply rejoice in company because for the moment, you and your companion are both alive and in the same place in the world. And you are mirrors of one another.
It also taught me that when you build your homes out of coconut palms, your life is a very fragile thing. A stiff wind can blow it all away. Under those circumstances, why the hell shouldn't you go up to someone who makes 100 times your annual income and say pay my electricity bill. And say it without apology and with dignity. Not because you deserve it, but because it's what you want and you have no other idea of how to get it.
It also taught me that when you understand that the world is more than homes made of coconut palms, you can say with kindness and without condemnation, No. I want to sit on the beach with you, and watch the waves.
Because your life too is like a grass hut, and you too have needs and you don't have to apologise for them either. :)
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2 Mar 2007 11:25 am (UTC)Sure, but lest you think me too evolved, I should put it in context. Ten years before spending time in Vanuatu I had a brief expatriate love affair with Japan. It did my head in, but left me cosmopolitan, worldly-wise and sophisticated (just ask me - I'll tell you. :D)
It's not visiting to another culture that does your head in. It's immersing yourself there; trying to find that part of it that you want to call home.
There's no getting around it. We don't just need to survive in a place; we need to feel that we are valued, respected, welcomed and belong. Until we feel that, we create a sphere of our native culture around us. It entraps and stifles us; creates friction, cognitive dissonance. We want to escape our cultural blinkers but there's no place safe to escape to.
Meanwhile, one part of our mind is trying to accept, accommodate, welcome. Another part is simply trying to adapt, camouflage, survive. A third part is snarling like a wolf (hence my pic above), trying to keep the threats away until we feel safe. There's no reconciling these three parts; they each claim their own turf. The longer we know we're staying, the more these parts fight.
In Japan, I was enormously judgmental, contemptuous, brittle. I was less than my best as a person. But at the same time I was striving more than I ever had before, to accommodate, accept and support. I was also becoming - in some part of me at least - Japanese. Although it wasn't my native culture, I discovered that everything they did differently had resonance in a part of me. That part grew. I learned more about respect, humility, sacrifice and kindness then than I had in all the years since I was a child. Not because the Japanese were better at these things, but because they helped take some of the distortion out of the mirror of my own self-reflection. It made me question and take new decisions from a broader perspective.
Looking back, I realise that much of the fighting I did was against myself, against seeing a clearer reflection. The Japanese weren't pushing me. My conflict was internal.
When I visited Vanuatu I did what I always try and do when visiting another culture - I rolled my sleeves up, dived in, swam in the soup and drank it. But this time I knew that it would be an expatriate romance with all of the tumult that this caused. I was ready for that, rejoiced in the bittersweet of it, laughed at my own conflicts and frustrations.
What Vanuatu taught me was that you could have joy, fun, belonging without the trappings of comfort, affluence, prestige - or even kindness and compassion. You can simply rejoice in company because for the moment, you and your companion are both alive and in the same place in the world. And you are mirrors of one another.
It also taught me that when you build your homes out of coconut palms, your life is a very fragile thing. A stiff wind can blow it all away. Under those circumstances, why the hell shouldn't you go up to someone who makes 100 times your annual income and say pay my electricity bill. And say it without apology and with dignity. Not because you deserve it, but because it's what you want and you have no other idea of how to get it.
It also taught me that when you understand that the world is more than homes made of coconut palms, you can say with kindness and without condemnation, No. I want to sit on the beach with you, and watch the waves.
Because your life too is like a grass hut, and you too have needs and you don't have to apologise for them either. :)
Hope that helps. :D
Ruv.