“Alas! And now where on earth am I? What do I here myself?”
-Homer
The Odyssey
Coming home is about readjustment.
“When I go back I know I shall be out of it; we fellows who’ve spent our lives out here always are.”
-Somerset Maugham
The Gentleman in the Parlour
In our cultural diversity course, we’ve looked at working with people from other cultures, whether in our nation or abroad. We’ve also examined our own cross-cultural abilities. We’ve experienced different games designed to represent cross-cultural situations such as “in-group, out-group”, and values. We’ve identified major cross-cultural categories such as space, time, thinking styles, and communication styles. Now, we turn to the subject of returning home after having spent a number of years, or maybe just a few months, in another country. We will look at “re-entry.” I know that some of you (my students) have had the experience of re-entry to Israel.
Re-entry is not a matter of picking up where you left off. Most expatriates find that readjusting back home (reverse culture shock) is more difficult than adjusting overseas.
Two-thirds of returning professionals complained of suffering from “out of sight, out of mind” syndrome upon reentry. One in four returning expatriates leave their firm.
“When I got back to my hometown in Ohio and went to work, I fell back into hanging out evenings in the neighborhood tavern with my old buddies. After about two weeks of that I gave up the tavern. They didn’t care about the problems of the Indians in Peru, and I didn’t give a damn what happened to the Indians (baseball team) in Cleveland.
-American Peace Corps volunteer
“My advice about coming home? Don’t.
-Japanese businessman
It is because the overseas experience is so rich and stimulating that reentry becomes a problem.
Remember: Frustration, loneliness, and unpleasantness are very often the precursors of insight and personal growth. The price you pay for an overseas sojourn is often the bargain of a lifetime.
Mark: “I’ll keep reminding myself.” LOL
Most of the pleasure in returning home is in the anticipation not the reality.
‘“Home” is the place where you are known and trusted and where you know and trust others; where you are accepted, understood, indulged, and forgiven; a place of rituals and routine interactions, of entirely predictable events and people, of few surprises.’
The familiar places, people, routines, and predictable patterns of interaction in your “home” may have changed. You have to learn to get around these changes again. Fewer people may recognize you and you them. When you recognize them they may not recognize you because you have changed.
What once seemed clean or dirty to you may now seem the opposite. You may not feel the same about many of the places of your past.
Some former best friends may have made new best friends. There may be many familiar faces but fewer familiar people. You have to get to know each other again.
Routines, which enhance your well-being and security and thereby contribute to feelings of self-confidence and self-esteem, change.
You’ll spend a lot of your energy learning routine things; cashing a check, mailing a letter and so forth. The most mundane tasks require your conscious attention.
A personal note: I know that I will be mightily irritated when people will ask me over and over again how I “survived” the bombings and shootings in Israel. My statistical explanation that Israel is safer than Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and most certainly Chicago will fall, over and over again, on deaf ears. Mark: “Maybe I won’t bother”! The fact that people will not accept my explanation will increase any feelings of alienation.
Below are some statistics from the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. My calculations are “back of the envelope” however they indicate that the mortality rate by violence in Israel is half that of New York City and more than one fifth of Chicago. A final project for you?
1997 Homicides Population Homicides per 100,000
Boston 43 312,411 13.76
Chicago 757 2,765,852 27.36
L.A. 576 3,541,309 16.2
NY City 770 7,320,477 10.5
9/00-9/01 Homicides Population Homicides per 100,000
Also: Beginning 9/29/00, 550 Israelis and 1600 Palestinians have perished.
“Home” is not a place you should have to get used to. You may find some things about “home” surprising, offensive, and even shocking. You may feel an alien in your own country. The explanation is that you got used to, they became norms, the way of life overseas. They became “normal” to you and their certainty and predictability made it possible for you to relax and feel comfortable overseas. Now at “home” you may find yourself judging things based on your overseas norms. The overseas norms have become a part of your value system.
You may now show your feelings more or less, be used to a faster or slower pace of life, be more or less group oriented, be more or less attuned to material culture, have more or less time-consciousness, be more or less of a direct communicator, and be more or less results-oriented. You may now find your “home” con fusing, frustrating, disgusting, and just plain wrong. You may now perceive things through a foreign sensibility.
The strangeness of home may be more alarming than the strangeness of overseas. You can accept that you may not fit overseas but the idea that you don’t fit at home, where you are going to spend much of the rest of your life, is deeply disturbing. If you don’t belong at home, where do you belong?
The people back “home” may seem narrow and provincial. They may not be able to talk about world affairs. The idea of adjusting to these people, becoming like them, is not instantly attractive. Later, in time, the returnee will discover that their own culture and people are not all quite as shallow, wasteful, shameless, and materialistic as they first appear. Mark: “C’e sempre speranza”!
Telling your stories will likely induce a glaze in the eyes of your friends, family, and fellow citizens. They’re probably more interested in local news including gossip, and the weather. When you can’t tell your stories, you are in effect obliged to remain a stranger to the people you love. They may listen about a half hour or so but then the attention span is gone. Hard as it may seem to you, their new job or house is more interesting to them than your time in the Congo or climbing Mt. Fuji or visiting Jerusalem or scuba diving in Eilat. They may also feel inadequate or jealous. Close friends and family may feel rejected if you carry on too long about how wonderful your experiences were. They may think well, obviously, you can’t like being back here with us too much.
How can you convey the smells? The sounds? It’s impossible.
You must accept that people will not quite understand you.
Overseas, you may have gone to Venice, the Masai Mara game park, Bali, or Jerusalem. Now, your options are to visit your family in Cincinnati or your sister in San Diego. It seems a little mundane.
You may miss your celebrity status and higher profile. As a foreigner you stand out. You get more attention. You’re automatically more interesting (Mark: Hard to believe I know LOL). Most expatriates enjoy the notoriety. Back “home” you melt into the crowd; you’re anonymous and ordinary. You don’t dazzle people with your command of Swahili, Chinese or French.
Mark: I met some Chinese finally in Tel Aviv.
Overseas you may have dined and played golf with captains of industry, popular cultural figures, and ambassadors. In time, a periodic craving, called shrimpism, which is a desire for a brush with famous people, is induced. Now, you’re happy when your neighbors accept your dinner invitation after your parents can’t make it.
There is a sense of excitement and adventure at being abroad that many returnees miss. Overseas, you may also be part of a close-knit expatriate community. You may miss this on return.
“My problem is that I’m 23 years old and I’ve already had the experience of a lifetime.”
-Young foreign aid worker after 2 years in
Colombia
What returnees can do to ease the burden of return.
1) Make a list of all the things you want to do in the overseas country before you return to your “home” nation.
2) Prep your family and close friends in your “home” nation to have a little patience with you and let you go on and on about your exciting experiences…at least for a few weeks!
3) Anticipate what it will be like to return “home”. What do you expect? What do you think it will feel like? Get your assumptions and expectations out on the table.
4) Understand it’s perfectly normal to find reentry difficult, to feel a little depressed at “home” and want to go back overseas. It’s unwise to deny you’re having difficulty.
5) Don’t jump to conclusions about your compatriots. Give it some time! Mark: “They’re really fascinating, warm, cosmopolitan people?”
6) Give yourself plenty of time to adjust. You’re not going to feel at “home” for several weeks, even months. Adjustment is a gradual affair. Be patient with yourself.
7) Remember you have been through transitions before and have the skills to adjust; when you went abroad, changed jobs, had a child, or when a loved one passed away.
8) Don’t be so eager to tell everything that happened to you all at once. Give friends and relatives gradual exposure.
“I am shortly to return from a most enjoyable six weeks at Helsinki University. I am worried that I may bore or even alienate my friends in London by talking too much about Helsinki. What would be the correct number of times I can mention Helsinki on a daily basis?
A.B., Helsinki
Answer: If you limit your use of the words Helsinki and Finland to about a dozen times per day, you should run no danger whatsoever of alienating your English friends. Mention of “frozen sea” should be limited to five times a day; “reindeer meat” only once a day.”
Mark: “What about Israel”?
9) Be sure to ask the people back home what has happened in their lives. Show patience for their responses.
10) Prioritize the things you must do upon reentry.
11) Get a grip on your budget.
12) Seek out other returnees for a sympathetic ear. This may provide immense emotional relief.
13) It may be possible to have contact with foreigners when you return. There may be international organizations you can join.
Remember: if you’d never gone abroad in the first place you would’nt have had all those wonderful adventures and experiences you now sometimes long for, never have met the people you now miss, and never have learned those invaluable lessons about yourself and the world that changed you.
The Art of Coming Home by Craig Storti, 2nd ed., Intercultural Press, 2001