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March 2008
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By globalistgirl, on March 2nd, 2008

Need to be somewhere else

From time to time, I get little hints from whatever country I’m living in that the perspectives from other countries I occasionally mention or present are irrelevant or easily incorporated into the way of thinking prevalent in the country we’re in. (If you know physics, kind of like they dismiss arguments about needing to consider cultural difference by saying perturbation theory is all you need, other than the simplest possible model.) And from time to time, those hints build up into an overwhelming sense of that no one is listening to me or sees any reason to listen to me when I’m speaking from personal experience about culture differences, and that maybe I should just move to another country and see if I can find a better one.

At least, I think that’s why I get a crushing sense of wanting to be somewhere completely different sometimes. Last week, I almost started crying in my car in the parking lot outside the grocery store I shop at, because the whole thing was so ridiculously American that it was like a bad joke, and exaggregated movie, and I didn’t want to be in it. I wanted to be approaching a Chinese grocery store (on foot) with Chinese things and foods inside, smell the smells of a Chinese supermarket and the smells in the air outside. I wanted to take a taxi with my groceries home. Maybe even argue with the cabbie about the short ride and whether he should or shouldn’t take me. There was some American 80s music playing inside, and it was irritating me immensely.  There were 372469175 kinds of large bags of chips and 2L bottles of soda, and aisles upon aisles of pre-made food in boxes and cans where there should have been regular food, like dried berries, rice, or dried mushrooms. (We read in some expat materials before the China move that Chinese are obsessed with fresh food. I wasn’t sure what that meant, and was even more confused once in a Chinese supermarket – there was lots of frozen, dried and preserved food. Now that I’m living in the US as an adult and shopping, I’m 99.9% sure that whoever wrote that Chinese are obsessed with fresh food was American. From their point of view, everyone must be obsessed with fresh food.)

From time to time, something jilts me and I see the country I’m in as if I just stepped off the plane and don’t understand why the locals do such silly things.  I think it’s a cumulative effect of many small reminders that people don’t appreciate how much their culture determines their reality and that to explore Reality, others’ realities also have to be explored, and therefore culture considered, like I said above. But I’m not quite sure. I had no idea why I didn’t want to be in the United States all of a sudden at the time, and my theory is mostly an after-the-fact construction.  I wonder if this is something all third culture kids go through, or whether it’s just me. I wasn’t irritated at anything in particular that Americans do at the time. I just got incredibly bored of being here. And why in the supermarket parking lot? Not a clue.

March 2nd, 2008 | Tags: , , | Category: Cultural Marginalization, Distant Proximities, Third Culture | 1437 comments

1,437 comments to Need to be somewhere else

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