Roots for trees and humans
Human beings are like trees, uprooted they are unlikely to survive. However, unlike trees, humans may also benefit from near uprooting, which is expatriation. Expatriation may be a positive change, but may also lead to failure and despair. What, for us, makes roots so important is evident: the emotional and spiritual link to the motherland, the language, the customs, the culture, the family, friends, landscapes, books, music, all things that make people in one country, sometime one region, recognise they are at home: their place.
Leaving all this behind takes courage, particularly if there is no forceful reason to move away, such as war, famine or other calamities (I am not suggesting these circumstances do not require courage as well). Expatriates by choice have many different reasons to be, yet turning such a move into a positive change is never easy. Leaving home, but staying in one’s own country, is often painful enough. Leaving both home and country behind is many times more difficult, particularly if the change is also a change of language, even with cultural similarities, for example, a move within European countries. Moving to a totally different culture, sometime in hostile circumstances, is of course even more difficult.
Causes for expatriation
Causes for expatriation failures are numerous: failure to adapt, difficulties with jobs, indeed problems with language, home sickness. But factors of success are interesting to identify. One positive change, may of course be also a main motivation to move: new work opportunities, acquisition of new skills, the benefits of a new understanding, arising from seeing life and the world in a somewhat different perspective. Acquiring another language, learning about a different culture is of course getting richer, as a person, and potentially growing as an individual.
What makes a positive change? Those things we have already mentioned, personal growth, having the benefit from a different perspective, but also opportunities to meet others, sometime to find love or friendship. A successful move to another country, is also the basis to explore, and test, the world of work and one’s ability to evolve, to develop and adapt. Such a change is also not without risks. Adapting too well may lead the loss of loyalty – to old friends, to family, to one’s own country, all things that may turn us into forever foreigners.
Roots and being
A really positive change is one that allows us to preserve, and cherish, the best of two cultures (or more, but this is even more precarious). Acquiring this ability takes time, patience, and love for both the country we came from, and for our adoptive one. Many books have been written, memoirs and fiction, about rootlessness, and loss of the motherland. A positive change is the opposite: a little like, for a tree, growing new roots in a different soil. We, humans, are gifted with the ability to maintain our roots in more than one place at a time.
In my case, the motivation to move was both positive and negative. I do not know if this is the usual case. Professionally I was seeking a move to improve my skills and ability to exercise in more than one language. Emotionally I felt in a kind of dead-end, and welcome a change, the cleaner the better. I guess this is not unusual. There is also a right age to do these things, enough experience but potential to grow, strength but space to develop. In this respect each individual is different.
To conclude let’s say that acquiring another perspective on life, history, the ways of the world, is of enormous benefits for one’s understanding, and ability to communicate, and also a source of inspiration. Bloggers understand this better than most: often they seek the virtual uprooting, through visitors and visiting different worlds.
Picture: A Dutch Man-of-war and Various Vessels in a Breeze, c. 1640. Found in the collection of the National Gallery, London. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
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