Tag Archives: Culture

A Christmas with Two TCKs

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A TCK Life ChristmasI have spent a good deal of time discussing issues that are relevant to the Third Culture as a whole with this collection, focusing heavily on presenting a semi-biased (all things are biased) but attempted neutrality when talking about culture as a whole. The topics have ranged drastically, and have covered matters that range from thought-provoking to lighthearted. When WordPress sent me my year-end report, my most popular articles included I Tell Them That I’m English, Hong Kong Kids, The TCK Life I Remember, and Expatriate Everywhere. These topics were all written very differently with very different goals. However, none of them were written conversationally, and none focused on an element I promised in this blog from Day One after I published The Illusive Home. This promise was that this collection would feature articles that stimulate the mind and make you think about culture, but that it would also show you the personal side of a Third Culture Kid living the life of an adult.

So, I figured with the holiday season almost at a close, what with 2013 looming ahead welcoming us to a New Year, it was time that I put up one final post for the year that did exactly that. Today, I want to embrace the spirit of the season, and just talk to you, my readers, about the experience I had this holiday season. As a TCK, this season is always interesting. There are endless battles throughout the year about who goes where, when we do what, who will join us, and why. This is just the way we do the holidays. My brother and I are TCKs. My parents are Expatriates. And while I live over a thousand miles away from my parents, my brother about 500 miles from them in the opposite direction, and all of us over 4000 miles from our family in England, we always pick one of our Homes, modern or historic, to go back to.

This year I went Home to Houston for Christmas. Of course, I had to leave Home in Raleigh to do it, and all the while I was thinking about the family back Home in England who I wouldn’t see and the friends in my Homes of Hong Kong and Paris and Australia and Singapore and anywhere else I have people I care about. But I had to pick somewhere, and my parents wanted me to come see them despite the desires of my brother and me to go to England and see the extended family. So Home I went, back to Houston, to see my brother, parents, and my maternal grandparents who had chosen to hop the pond this year and join us.

Christmas is always an interesting time of year when I am with my family in Houston, and even more interesting when I’m with my grandparents. To jump start it all, it was 80 degrees Fahrenheit on Christmas day, which is just wrong in my professional opinion as a seasoned meteorologist with a degree from the extremely prestigious University of Looking Up the Weather on Google. I am a Northern Hemisphere sort of person in the winter, and I strongly believe that the season demands cold weather. My parents, unfortunately, aren’t that way. They spent too much time in England in their youth and have an unnatural and inhuman fear of anything below 79 degrees.

On top of that, my poor mother lives in a home of three atheist male humans, a female canine that doubles as a piece of furniture when she’s not praying to the gods of Dog Food, and a male canine that believes all humans except my mother are out to condemn his soulless body to an absence of the afterlife upon contact. Then there’s Lynn. She is our key to all those religious things that partial Christians do, like Easter and Christmas and… well that’s really it, actually. She ropes us into these holidays full of fun, social, and generally sinful activities with the occasional sly nudge that sort of says “don’t forget, this is also Jesus’ birthday.”

Interestingly, I enjoy celebrating Buddha’s birthday more, but we can’t have it all our way. This is Lynn’s time of year, and so my brother and I play along like the beautiful little cultural melting pots we are. We help her decorate the tree (this year it was done via a Google+ Hangout) barking orders from the comfort of the sofa while she does all the work. Usually we’re excellent managers. We know exactly where all the ornaments should go and we’re nothing but critical if things aren’t done properly. I’m blaming the results of this year’s tree construction on the conversion from a three dimensional viewing space to a two-dimensional viewing space. It’s so hard to gather depth and perspective from a computer monitor. That’s why I maintain that this was not our fault:

Again, not our fault!

Again, not our fault!

I suggested that we just leave it that way to symbolize the new tradition of “Relaxed Christmas,” where even the Tree gets to kick back and not care about anything. Unfortunately, this was vetoed by our more traditional-Christmas mother who set it back up with the help of some friends and redecorated it. Fortunately, the second time around it wasn’t as front-heavy and it remained standing. This probably had a lot to do with the 50+ ornaments that were no longer on it due to their inescapable fate of shattering on the hard tiled floor during the Great Collapse of 2012.

After that, we did the normal Christmas things. Our mother, who has effectively given up cooking since both Robert and I departed, left us to fend for ourselves. We helped with Christmas dinner, and by helped I mean I flew a remote controlled helicopter around her head while she prepared the meal and my brother made sure to point out all the pieces of skin on the potatoes that my grandfather had missed while peeling them. It’s a team effort, really. We opened some gifts, drank a substantial amount of alcohol, and generally had a good time.

So what was it that made this event interesting for me as a Third Culture Kid? Well, for starters, my global cultural outlook has developed a pool of different cultural and religious celebrations from all corners of the world. My favourite being Chinese New Year, the Lunar Festival, Buddha’s Birthday, and any apocalypse parties that accompany whatever end-of-world prophecy happened that year. Christmas, unfortunately, never makes the cut as my favourite celebration.

In classic tradition, my brother and I make sure to point out at least once that Christmas isn’t fun, it’s just stressful, and more importantly it’s not a religious holiday anymore but a merchant holiday designed to make you spend too much money. This always upsets Lynn because she wants to believe it is still a Christian holiday, but I think us saying that we don’t enjoy it upsets her for the wrong reasons. It has nothing to do with the fact that it’s Jesus’ birthday. I don’t believe in any god, but I am perfectly fine celebrating the religious holidays of any culture because I love the lifestyle that accompanies it and the joy in the believers eyes. It is inspiring. But Christmas isn’t like that. Christmas is stressful, exhausting, expensive, and has lost all cultural meaning. The only reason more people don’t flip out about it is because they’re too busy hating Valentines Day. That and they’re being showered with gifts, I suppose.

And this misunderstanding always results in the development of other unnecessary debates. For example, my grandmother (Nan), grandfather  and me watched the Queen’s speech. She made a reference this year to the birth of a child so long ago that taught the values of life, a reference she hasn’t made in many, many years. However, she intentionally did not say to which child. Just a child. My grandparents were immediately glad she finally did that because Christmas is a Christian holiday, and I quickly pointed out the fact it wasn’t, resulting in them getting upset. But the truth of the matter is, the Queen didn’t really point out anything. English roots run deeper than Christianity into the Pagan faith, one that shares almost to the letter the same exact story of a boy born on the same day from a virgin mother with the same beliefs leading the same teachings but all for a different faith. And there are countless hundreds more. There are so many little boys born around Christmas in the world-wide history of countless faiths and cultures who did similar if not almost identical things.

And that’s where the TCK side comes into it all, and the misunderstanding looms. For me, it’s not about the god’s validity. It’s about how you accept others. And when you immediately shut down the idea that there are other interpretations of this holiday, and that yours isn’t the only one, then I am afraid my TCK side dies a little inside. Because that’s not what the holidays are about,  no matter what faith you’re jumping into or what time of year you’re celebrating. Holidays are for coming together, celebrating, and enjoying food, culture, family, and friends. It’s about unity, celebration, and another cycle.

And I don’t think there’s a TCK out there that doesn’t understand exactly that.

___________

The Author
Post by: James R. Mitchener

Life From a Window

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Life from a Window

As a Third Culture Kid, flight is a natural part of my life. I am inherently conditioned to love it, mainly because it’s the birthplace of how I became a TCK. Flight has opened up the ability for people to shuttle all over the world, and it has made TCKs so culturally diverse because we can actually travel to hundreds of places a year. The time that was once the burden of international travel is now almost nonexistent. I can be anywhere in the world in less than a day. So when I say that I love to fly, I need you to understand my full meaning. Flying isn’t just a love. It is part of who I am. It is the start of everything, and the end of everything. And this natural love means that to a TCK, it isn’t the same as it would be to an FCK.

I actually like economy, the only time my fear of tight spaces is nonexistent. I sit in the aisle, letting me stick out my legs or get up and down without bothering the person next to me. I will read an entire book without stopping, because for those X amount of hours there is no internet, no one calling or texting, and not enough space for me to pull out my computer and really get into things. I am disconnected from the world, and I love it, because as I soar on by at incredible speeds, I know that the entire landscape of everything is changing beneath me away from my eyes. But the most interesting part of flight for me is that, for as long as I can remember, I have never sat in a window. I have not looked out of the plane once for as long as my memory allows. I step on in one place, looking through the crack in taxi-bay before I step into the plane, and then I see nothing until I step out of the terminal in an entirely new city, state, country, continent.

But yesterday, when I boarded the Embraer bound for RDU from IAH, I realized that my seat, 4A, was both a window and an aisle. I have been making international trips for so long that I had forgotten planes as small as this existed. And here I was in this tiny three-seats-to-a-row plane, my legs in the aisle and my head staring out the window. And for the first time in my conscious memory, I got to watch the world as I flew through the night back to Raleigh, and even as a TCK that has seen it all a hundred times, so many times that he gave up looking, what I saw was more than I could have ever imagined.

As I sat there, I remember thinking to myself “I wish I were a poet, because then I would have the mastery of words to explain what I see.” But I am not a poet. I am a narrative writer, and I describe things through the elongated use of diction where words build sentences, sentences build paragraphs, paragraphs build chapters, and chapters build books.

As the engines roared and I stared out the window of a plane that was closer to the ground than the window of a bus is to the road, I watched as the lines in the pavement began to speed up. I watched, waiting to see how long it would take before the crevices in the runway moved by so quickly that they looked flat beneath me, the optical illusion of speed ripping my ability to distinguish  depth on the surface of the Earth. And when I could see them no more, the nose tilted into the air, and I felt the familiar pull of the plane as it grabbed hold of the lift required to launch it into the sky.

But this time, I watched the world beneath me. I saw us fly up, faster than I had ever realized, the world shrinking beneath me as walking people vanished from view and cars looked so small that all I could see in the darkness were the headlights that moved along the road at what appeared to be a snail’s pace. And then we were above the subdivisions of Houston. In the darkness, I could see the Christmas lights outlining the roofs of everything still decorated beneath me. And as we banked, I saw the doors of houses illuminated by porch lights, one bright red and so small in the distance of the ground.

I watched as hundreds and hundreds of houses, streets, buildings, and cities in the distance passed me by. I watched the curvature of the earth grow as we climbed, my ability to see into the distance stretching further and further as we went higher and higher, the light of the clear sky painting everything with a luminous glow. I saw the expanse of our species, spread across the land with so much darkness between us until there appeared an eruption of light from a cluster of houses where people had flocked together in the middle of nowhere, just so they didn’t have to live alone.

Then the clouds came. Like an ocean beneath me, we crossed into the overcast and all the lights were hidden. Every cloud was painted with the same glow of the moon, but as I looked out the window and the light caught the clusters of water hovering in the sky, it bent and curved and refracted to make the clouds beneath me wave like the flowing motion of an ocean. I watched as shadows turned to light, as wind blew the clouds up and over, as the light bent with each individual droplet shifting its rays. And for an hour I stared, watching the clouds dance to an audience of just me.

When my curiosity took hold, I cast my eyes up to the sky. In the darkness of my cabin, not a single aisle light or reading lamp switched on, I could see the stars above me. And with the clouds masking the light of a glowing city, the stars had multiplied to a number so spectacular that I was immediately reminded of a week I spent in the Australian Outback staring up at the night sky and marveling at how many stars I could actually see without aid of a telescope. It was as if the entire sky was white, with dots of black where light was missing, all shining together to help make the clouds dance.

After an hour of childish hypnotism, I saw that the clouds were coming to an end. Like the ocean hitting a beach, they ended in a perfectly cut straight line, from overcast to clear skies without any remnants or stragglers in-between; it was simply taking nothing to everything in the blink of an eye, from me to the horizon. As we approached the edge of the ocean of clouds, the familiar rattle of turbulence kicked in, letting me know that I was finally passing from one temperature and into another. And as though it were timed with the apparition of the world beneath me, as soon as we crossed the edge of cloud ocean, the rattling of the plane ceased and we were sailing smoothly and unhindered once again.

In the distance, I could see mountains; a collection of lights that rose into the sky as houses, buildings, and roads climbed the inclines towards to the sky. Beneath me was the approaching city of Raleigh, and above me the stars, now faded by the light of the ground, but still twinkling behind the mask of hazed artificial light.

And we began to descend. Slowly, the world grew larger, the earth closer, the sky further away. The landing gear clicked, and the runway appeared. The wheels made contact, and once again, I was back on the ground. Except this time, I had watched it all. I had seen every moment from start to finish, captivated like a child who has never been in a plane before in his life, despite the countless number of times I had been there.

Like I said before: I wish I were a poet so that I could show you how beautiful the world was through the eyes of that TCK that felt for the first time in conscious memory that he had never flown before. But alas, I am not. I am just a Third Culture Kid who is proud to say that even today, it’s not just the cultures of those around me that surprise and inspire me. It’s the beauty of the world beneath us, and the knowledge that while the world was not built for us, we were most certainly built for the world.

___________

The Author

Author

Post by: James R. Mitchener

The Definition of Global Synergy

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Third Culture Kid Golobal SynergyOne of the most interesting words that permeates corporate life, outside of the whole “Green” word that has been making such a heavy-handed appearance as of late, is “synergy.” Synergy has become one of the most sought after elements of any intelligent corporation to date, and what makes it all the more interesting is that it’s actually an idea that is completely dependent on the individuals that make up a work-culture to achieve.

Regardless of whether your company wants to achieve synergy with partnering companies, synergy between internal departments, or even synergy with companies that fall into a mild degree of competition with your market, it all boils down to the people involved. Unfortunately, the word has been used so often and so loosely that it has become more of a buzz word than an actual idea, but it’s the idea that gave birth to the buzz word that ties so beautifully into the theme of this collection.

Synergy is, by definition, “the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.” (Google Definitions) Sure, we all appreciate the value in that definition, but like so many things in this world, the true power of synergy is so much more than the words on a page.

For Third Culture Kids, synergy isn’t a corporate word, but a way of life. It is how we have lived every single day, how we have grown and evolved and adopted, how we have changed the way we think and behave and how we have changed the thoughts and behaviours of others. Synergy is a fundamental lifestyle adopted by global nomads. It’s a level of acceptance, understanding, and strength. It’s a shared understanding that the perceived and projected disability of being “different” is actually the gateway to the most successful, stimulating, and awe-inspiring progress we can achieve as both individuals and a community.

Synergy is Culture.

I recently participated in an interview that covered questions concerning my life as an immigrant, the cultures I find greatest association with, and how those cultures were impacted by the faiths of those surrounding me. I was asked to tell my story, from birth to modern day, on where I’d lived and how those things had shaped me. Halfway through this interview, I was asked what it felt like to be a minority (I believe that Third Culture Kids are always a minority, even when surrounded by other TCKs), and how my culture was impacted by those feelings.

It led to a two part answer, one that inspired me to explain the power of TCKs and their ability to work seamlessly to create a synergistic culture anywhere in the world. It started with a story I have touched on before, derived from where I felt most comfortable as a minority. I talked of my second stint in Hong Kong when I was 14-15 years old, a freshman in high school. At the time, my group of friends were a mess of lost cultures, like myself, struggling to find a log to grab hold of in the sea of cultural identity. We consisted of one friend from each of the following cultures: Welsh, N. Korean, S. Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, French, Spanish, Filipino, English, and American. We were all different, all wrestling with our passport country identity, and all Third Culture Kids with completely different developmental histories.

But that was what made us unite. We were all different, but fundamentally we were all driven by exactly the same ideas. We wanted to understand the world, and through our friends we had a gateway to 10 different countries, all of which had different cultural backgrounds and all of which possessed elements that we would adopt into our own Third Culture to expand who we were. And with those adaptations, with those adoptions of varying backgrounds, beliefs, and lifestyles, we became more synergized.

And this is where the true beauty of the power of Third Culture Global Synergy came into realization. We didn’t just unite as a group, we took those unities into ourselves and absorbed that culture of 10 different countries we had created with us when we left. We were all TCKs, all natural absorbers, all completely aware that one day we would separate and take the memories of our past with us. And with those memories, we had each added cultures to our repertoire that strengthened our abilities to work together, or work with others from any of the 10 backgrounds we now shared.

I think that it’s in this little developmental quirk that the true power of global synergy can be seen. TCKs are the definition of synergy, and synergy is nothing more than the ability to unify cultures. As TCKs, we were molded into the perfect tool for synergistic unity. Throw us into a room full of strangers and our natural ability to adapt will operate as a catalyst for anyone we meet. And that takes me to the second part of the question that was asked to me during my interview: What makes me feel like a minority?

I am a TCK, and so no matter where I go, I am always a minority. My culture is not shared by anyone because it was built out of the fragments of so many different pieces of so many different cultural puzzles. Even my TCK friends would agree that while we understand the fundamental truth that we share our separation from the First Culture, we do not even truly share our Third Culture. The Third Culture of each TCK is completely different from TCK to TCK. It all comes down to the elements of the cultures we were exposed to that we chose to adopt.

And so my status as a minority isn’t a feeling I notice. It’s a perpetual state of existence, one that has been present my entire life, one that I have both fought and embraced. But now, as an Adult TCK, I can say that the only time I feel out of place, the only time I feel like a true “minority” is when I lie to myself about who I am. When I cover up the truth of my multicultural background, pretend to be something I’m not, or hide elements of my life because I know they will cause friction with the culture I am part of, that is when I feel alienated, disrespected, or minoritized.

The truly interesting part of that feeling is that, unlike many other minority groups that feel separated because of the stigmas the world places upon them, I feel like a minority because I am placing the stigma upon myself. I can adapt, evolve, fit in. I can lie if I need to and be completely convincing that that’s exactly who I am. I can live that lie every day, and be a culture I am not because I have a completely subconscious and natural eye for absorbing the cultural queues that make me fit in.

Whether it’s lying by saying “amen” sitting around a table, lying about my sex life, lying about my dating etiquette, lying about where I tie my allegiance in sports, politics, or social issues, lying about how I perceive different races, lying about how I feel about other people’s reactions to cultural tension issues, these are the only times in my life that I feel truly out of place and separated.

In pretending to be one of “them,” I lose who I am. Which brings me full circle, back to the start. My life as a catalyst for synergy, a gateway for first culture kids to truly understand each other through the medium of my experiences, stems from a world in which I am both the biggest liar and the man who never lies.

As TCKs, we understand synergy fundamentally. We understand culture completely. And we understand that no matter how we fit into this world, we will always be entirely ourselves today, and yet never who we were yesterday.

_________

The Author

Author

Post by: James R. Mitchener

I Tell Them That I’m English

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English TCKThey ask me where I’m from, and I tell them that I’m English. They look at me curiously, listening to the American accent with a hint of something foreign in its sounding, a distant memory of a corner of the world that doesn’t jump off the page of my life, but hides itself behind the dominant sound of a confused American who is neither Southern nor Northern, Eastern nor Western.

They ask me where my accent is, and I tell them I bury it well. I tell them it’s there, beneath the mask of my partial-American upbringing. I tell them that I can switch to it easily, if I want, but for the sake of understanding, I use the American one because it’s easier given the company I am around. And when I speak those words, I intentionally increase the English inflection on my letter A’s and my T’s. They hear the change, and begin to smile and say “Oh I hear it now,” believing that now that I’ve told them, they’re picking up on something that was always there, and they immediately believe that I am not from this country despite the way I sounded when we met.

They ask me to speak with my English accent, and I transition over without issue or hindrance. I flip the switch in my brain, and immediately I become something different. My tongue moves quicker, the words exiting my lips more mumbled. Letters become lettas, colors become colas, isn’t it becomes ennit. I grab a pen and paper and write them a note, spelling words as I always do, with the language of my original passport country, adding “u” in words like colour and favourite, switching “er” to “re” in words like centre and theatre, or bringing the validity of “-ise” back to reality in words like centralise and realise.

They ask me why I moved here, and I tell them my father’s job brought us here, that I went to university in San Antonio and then I took jobs in America and didn’t want to go back to England because of the taxes. I then tell them that I will leave one day, but I simply haven’t left yet. Yet is the operative word. They look at me curiously. Some are wondering why I would ever want to leave wherever I am, why I don’t love the area they love so much. Others are thinking about how much they, too, would like to up and go. But they don’t understand what moving entails. Many of them have never left the state, yet alone country. But they want to know. Or think they want to know.

They ask me if America and England were the only places. I respond no, and I string the list together of places I have lived. England, Hong Kong, Singapore, France, America. Then I throw in, almost as an afterthought, that there were other places I lived when I was young, but I don’t remember them so they don’t count. They say how cool that is, how amazing it must have been to see all those places, experience all those things. They say I must have felt so lucky. And I just respond that yes, now that I am old, I know that I was one of the luckiest people I know, that I wouldn’t trade the experiences of my youth for anything in the world; Now that I am old.

They ask me where my favourite place to live was. If at the moment of asking I am feeling isolated from the world, I will tell them Hong Kong because it’s the most exciting culture I’ve experienced. If when they ask, I am feeling sad that I hardly know my family, I will tell them England because it’s where everyone I’m related to lives. If I’m missing beautiful country, clean air, and bright skies, I tell them France. If I’m wishing I’d seen more, done more, been more places, I’ll tell them Singapore because I remember so little about it. I do not tell them why. They do not know the secrets behind my reasons. I just name the place, and fall silent. But in my head, I am thinking all of those things. But the place I never say, ever, is that it’s America.

They ask me first why I love that country, and I feed them some creative lie about food or lifestyle. But the truth is always the reason of the moment. The truth is how I’m feeling in that specific pocket of time, a secret I keep for me and me alone. And when the reality of where I’ve lived sets in, of all the places I’ve seen…

They ask me why my favourite place isn’t America. And I tell them because it’s a country of people who believe themselves to be a melting pot of cultures and a land of equal rights, but everyone seems to hate the person next to them who doesn’t believe exactly what they do, or wants to live their life slightly different to the lifestyle of their neighbor. I tell them that it’s not a melting pot, that it’s a culturally resistant country, one that believes that patriotism and Americanism (whatever that may be) is the only way to live, and that everyone else should conform or “go home,” wherever that is.

And they get mad, and ask me nothing. They then attack, respond, and retaliate. They defend or unite. They consider me an outsider and think that my opinions are invalid because I am not one of them. They brush me off, or become my friend, but no matter the outcome, I am always the “English guy,” when in truth I am no more English than I am Chinese or American or French. But to them, I am the foreigner, the man that doesn’t quite fit into the comfort of their Americanism.

To them I am different. To me, I am what I have always been; I am a Third Culture Kid, a TCK, a Global Nomad, and an Expatriate everywhere.

When I step off the plane in England and walk into the local for my first pint, my mates come up and give me a hug for all the time they haven’t seen me. They introduce me to the new people I have not met, and say, “This is James, he’s not from around here!” and they shake my hand and buy me a pint.

They ask me where I’m from, and I tell them that I’m American.

_________

The Author

Author

Post by: James R. Mitchener

The TCK Foreign Reality

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TCK Life Logo and TextProbably one of the most unique and challenging elements of detailing what it means to be a Third Culture Kid is confronting the differences between the TCK community and the Expatriate community. To non-TCKs, or I suppose to anyone who doesn’t understand the internal workings of a TCK mind, the two are extremely similar. A TCK has lived all over the world, an Expat is living all over the world; a TCK doesn’t see their family often, an Expat doesn’t see their family often; a TCK is a frequent flier, an Expat is a frequent flier; a TCK knows the world in boxes and moving vans and shipping containers, an Expat knows the world in boxes and moving vans and shipping containers; and a TCK shows elements of cultures from around the world, while an expat shows elements from cultures around the world also.

To an outside observer, the two may very well be the same. But to us, the TCK community, we are entirely different from our expatriate counterparts. We are all built out of a sequence of events that has led to the development of our personality. Every structure capable of weathering time, especially the structures of our lives, must start with a strong foundation. This foundation is the blueprint for everything that’s built upon it, and each brick that’s laid on top of the next will either hold strong if it matches the plan, or will crumble if it doesn’t meet the requirements that our foundation has produced.

Like many things I write about in regards to Third Culture Kid Life, I make a conscious effort to find a neutral and core principle that encompasses the entire doctrine, then build up my explanation around that single idea. I do this for the sake of the parents of TCKs that read these pieces, not for the TCKs like myself that already understand on a fundamental level what it means to feel the way we feel. This collection was created to help explain who we are to those who simply cannot understand. So, when you’re taking on the impossible, I find that the items that are relateable to both parties are the only bridge to partial understanding that we can create.

When it comes to understanding why we as TCKs are not in any way the same as the traditional expat, even when we are living an expatriate life, I find it all boils down to one simple word with a sea of meaning; That word is “foreign.” To an expat, all travel is foreign. They are foreigners in a foreign land, outsiders, people living in a country that isn’t their own. Some of them love the place they’re in. Some hate it. But no matter how they feel about it, that country is never their home. They will always be intrinsically connected to the culture of their youth. They will have customs and lifestyle ideas that cannot be changed at all, and even more that cannot be changed without a great deal of effort.

It’s because of this interwoven knowledge that they are foreigners that will either make or break the experience for every single expat. They will either love viewing the world through their first culture lens, saying “Look at how different this is!” or “Back in [Home Country], you’d never be able to find one of these!” Or they’ll hate the entire experience for exactly the same reasons. But in the end, that lens through which they are analyzing their experience, the way that they are viewing the world, is built out of a single culture and a single line of experiences that was developed in their youth. They will always be First Culture Kids living in a world full of other First Culture Kids that are just completely different to themselves.

Of course, this does not mean an expat will not adjust. I have met many expats that have done their absolute best to assimilate into the life of a different country and culture. Plenty have even succeeded, at least on the surface level. But the truth is that during the developmental years of their lives, the years that built the foundation for the person they were going to become, their personality was constructed from the brick and mortar of a single culture.

This is where the TCK split comes into play. The stability that the Third Culture lacks, the one that has been a rampant part of almost every single article of the TCK Life collection, means that we view an expatriate life in a completely unique way. When we move to a foreign country, it isn’t anymore foreign to us than the last place we lived or the place our parents call home. The most common similarity with every TCK is that home to us is nothing more than a word other people use to describe the place they grew up in.

We are the children of the world, the global nomads that pick up and go not because we are wanting to experience something drastically different to what we already know, but because we are trying to add to the foundation of our development. The baseline of our lives, one that for FCKs was built out of stability and consistency, was built for TCKs out of country after country that had nothing to do with the place from which our parents originated.

For me, moving isn’t a burden. There is no fear in packing my things and starting my life somewhere I know absolutely nothing about. There is no discomfort in having no friends for the first few months of my stay in a different place. There is no paranoia in knowing I will not be able to understand, to interact, to survive with ease and simplicity. In truth, all those things inspire me. They motivate my internal cultural mixing pot and drive me to absorb everything around me. They make me adapt, to change, to understand everything I possibly can. Where an FCK will attempt to understand a foreign country by drawing parallels to the culture of their youth, a TCK will view a foreign land without bias or commitment from a land called “home.” I walk into any situation believing I will absorb and change in any way that inspires me.

I am English by birth, American/UK by passport, and Global by culture. None of these things define me. All of them define me. Really, the difference between an expat and a TCK is simple. To an expat, a new country is always a foreign place full of differences, good or bad. To a TCK, a new country is a place that makes the entire world a little less foreign, and a little more part of who we are.

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Post by: James R. Mitchener

The Author

Author

TCK Life Search Video

5 Replies

Thanks to the power of the Google Omniverse, this blog is going to be a little different to normal. I stumbled across the Google Search Video creation tool, and decided to put a little Search compilation together. It was quick-and-easy, but the point I was trying to make was to capture the elements of twenty-first century technology and the Adult TCK transitioning experience.

But that’s enough about that. Here’s the video:

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Post by: James R. Mitchener

A TCK’s Path to Atheism

5 Replies

Holding Faith“It’s fine that you are an atheist. I don’t care. It doesn’t bother me at all. But people we work with will always think less of you for it. These are good, strong, Christian families, and while I [as a Christian] don’t care about your choice to be an atheist, it doesn’t mean that they will feel the same way. You can be an atheist if you want. But remember that your decision will always be a roadblock to your success.”

“But that’s not fair. My atheism doesn’t define me.”

“Sure it is. And of course it does. You publicize your beliefs all the time.”

“No I don’t.”

“You talk about them in your writing, and you distribute that writing in places you know our clients can see it. You have to deal with the consequences of your actions.”

This conversation, one that took place between my business partner and me several months ago, may not be exactly as it was spoken. It’s close, though, and the parts that have been ringing in my memory since it was spoken are entirely accurate, even if they fall out of place in their timing.

I have a thick skin these days, one that has been developed through the expatriate life of a Third Culture Kid constantly uprooting his life, and one that has been strengthened by my continued development of content that is distributed through multiple channels all over the world. As a writer, I cannot let the criticism of others affect the truth behind my words. As a TCK, I cannot let the criticism of others affect the validity of my experiences.

This conversation, however, cut through both the TCK skin and the writer skin, and since I took part in the aforementioned conversation, I have been incapable of putting it out of my mind. I have wanted to write this piece since I had the talk. I have wanted to explain why it shook me so badly, why it hurt my heart, and why I felt ashamed to be myself for the first time in many, many years. I have wanted to try and explain the depth of who I am and what I believe for so long, to show the world that like everyone else, no single word can describe me. That I am more than just a TCK, more than an introvert, more than a writer, more than a hopeless romantic, and yes, more than an atheist. But unfortunately, I hold the words of this particular friend in higher regard than those of anyone else in my life. And so instead of reacting, I have tried to understand. And in my understanding, I have realized that this topic, this conversation, my atheism in the context of this moment in time, may be one of the single greatest parallels to the breakdown between TCKs and FCKs I have ever tried to conquer.

What my friend and business partner said was true in many ways, and wrong in many others. Where it was right, it was correct in the sense that he understands the limitation of human understanding. Where he was wrong is in exactly the same place. Where to start here is difficult, so I’ll pick the piece that began running circles in my mind from the second I heard it, the seed of words that bloomed into the deep thought of everything else: The fact that it was my “choice to be an atheist.”

I do not believe that I chose to be an atheist anymore than I chose to think, to write, to fall in love, or to absorb elements of every culture I come across. In fact, I think it was my natural need, my impulsive and uncontrollable desire to do all of these things that made me realize I was an atheist. I certainly didn’t start there. I didn’t spring forth into this world screaming “I don’t believe in God!” In fact, it was quite the opposite.

When I was young, my parents raised me and my brother to think for ourselves, to make our own choices on what we believed. My mother is a Protestant, my father is an atheist. Neither my brother nor myself knew this about our father for years. In fact, I don’t think I even knew my father was an atheist at the time I realized that I was one.

My mother taught me about God, told me the stories of the Bible, and shared with me any answer to any question I had regarding her religion that I had adopted as my own in my youth. Whenever I asked a question about something that made little sense to me, like the parting of the Red Sea or how all the animals in the world fit onto Noah’s Ark, she would answer as best she could, combining her beliefs with varying interpretations that bent to scientific theory. She conditioned me to think, to ask questions, and to ask “why” to everything. She may not have meant to do that, but I like to think she did. I’m proud of her for that. It was probably one of the greatest gifts she could have given me, to always seek out an answer to everything.

So as I grew up, I grew up Protestant. I was afraid of God, too, when I was young. I once accidentally took a toy from a friend in Bradbury Jr. School in Hong Kong that I thought was mine. After lots of fighting and me claiming that the boy had stolen my toy, I found that I had actually left mine in my bag and the one I had acquired was indeed his. I apologized and gave it back, but I remember spending weeks terrified that God would be mad at me for stealing something in my ignorance.

I continued to believe, without the guidance of Church, for years. I still had hints of my faith all the way up until I arrived in Hong Kong International School in eighth grade, sat down at my desk in a new class in a new country at the only English-speaking school option under the American and International Baccalaureate education systems, and found that I had a Bible as part of my mandatory reading list. Something inside of me got angry, and while I had never in all my life been frustrated by owning a bible (in fact, I had one my grandmother had bought for me when I was very little at home), something about the book of one faith without accompaniment of any other faiths being part of my required reading turned my stomach.

It was in that moment, that exact second that I opened up the familiar, thin, toilet-paper-like pages that I realized that I believed in Christianity as much as I believed in Hinduism or Taoism. I knew the faith, I knew the practices, and I knew the philosophy of all of them. But I was not a believer in the story or the validity of its word. I did not choose to be that way. I simply was. I had spent so much time asking questions, so much time operating in a way that my family had conditioned me to operate, in a way that my natural state of being demanded I operate, that I had learned because it fascinated me, not because I believed it.

As my time in Hong Kong went on, I continued to ask questions as I had always done my entire life. My Religious Education teacher, we will call him Mr. King, who taught me Christianity one day and Science the next on an alternating block schedule, quickly came to hate me. I never meant to insult him or to cut him down, but I think being the teenager I was with a head full of questions and a fundamental need to know the truth behind everything put a little too much pressure on the poor man to perform. He simply didn’t know what to do with me.

He tried, sort of, but I finally broke his reserve about three-quarters of the way through the year. The previous day he had taught us about evolution, about how Darwin had started a series of developing theories that had resulted in the scientific community proving entirely that evolution happens every single day all around us and always has since the dawn of life on this planet. Then the very next day, he taught us about Creationism, citing biblical text as solid evidence that was meant to be as valid as the scientific theory he had presented the previous day. Naturally, I asked him which one he believed, not because I wanted to pick him apart or belittle his faith, but because I truly wanted to understand how someone could believe both creationism as it stood word-for-word in the Bible and evolution simultaneously.

He couldn’t answer.

I asked him which one he felt had more validity to his life.

Again, he stumbled for a response.

I asked him how I, a man seeking answers, was meant to understand the significance of either religion’s response or science’s response to the question of the development of earth’s species when my educator couldn’t direct me (here, I admit, I may have overstepped my bounds, but while my teacher was frustrated at my questioning, my incessant need for answers was frustrating me equally as much with his inability to answer any of them).

Mr. King pointed to the door and yelled for me to get out of his classroom. I did as I was instructed and sat on the bench outside the door. A few minutes later, out came Mr. King, quietly closing the door behind him. I stood up and opened my mouth to apologize, to explain I was only trying to understand, but before a sound left my lips, Mr. King had spun around and grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, pinning me to a wall and jamming his finger into my chest. He yelled at me, his face inches from mine, about how I was never to undermine his authority again. He pressed his finger harder into my chest, and threatened that if I ever did it again, he would have me expelled.

Rage overcame me, something that has happened only three or four times in my life, and I slapped his hand out from chest and shoved him backwards so that he stumbled over his own feet. I pounced forward and punched him hard in the chest, right in the center of his sternum. “If you ever lay a finger on me again,” I spat, my voice no more than a screaming whisper as the anger in Mr. King’s face went from fury to fear. But then I paused. I stopped myself from continuing, my body shaking with rage caused by someone I trusted as a teacher and leader who had assaulted me with such burning hatred in his eyes for asking questions to which he simply didn’t have the answers. Mr. King went back into the classroom, and I never asked him another question about God again.

Often times, Mr. King would just send me out into the hall with my Bible to read alone, which I did without question or hindrance. I had learned a valuable lesson from him that day. Both of us, a man of God and a man of questioning, were both equally capable of breaking to the point of causing the other pain. The only difference was, he had to answer to his God, while I had to accept that it was me and me alone that had allowed myself to snap.

I swore then and there never to break like that again with anyone, and I have carried the memory of that moment with me since its occurrence.

But from then on, there was no going back. The realization was etched into the stone of my being; I was an atheist to my core. I never stopped learning about God or gods. I loved religion classes, and once I was done with Mr. King, I was given the opportunity to take many different courses with many different specialists regarding many different faiths. I bought books on Taoism and learned it myself, I read the Ramayana, I expanded my knowledge of Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam. I even dove into many different origin faiths of Africa and how those faiths adapted and changed, or were exterminated, at the arrival of Christian influence. But most of all, I dove deeper into Christianity, isolating many different denominations and learning all I could about the scripture, the history, the science, and the development of the faith. I learned where pieces branched off and why, I learned what areas believed what as a majority and why, I learned about the minorities that struggled to survive and why, and I took extra care to learn the details of the scripture itself in all of them. And I did this because all those gods, all those faiths, fascinated me.

But the more I learned about the gods of the world, the more I dove deeper into the countless number of faiths and the sub-faiths that stemmed from similar roots in some cases, vastly different roots in others, I began to see a trend that my mind of endless questions simply couldn’t adhere too. Every single one of them, and from what I have learned this is a rule that spans the entirety of faith, were born in times that needed one of two questions answered: Either a) How do we, as people, deal with the oppression that’s upon us, or b) How do we, as leaders, control a group of people that we do not have the resources or means to control?

But my mind of questioning was not stripped of faith from these questions. In the darkest of times, some of the greatest truths are always born. Regardless of the religion, they all held pearls of wisdom that rang true in the lives of everyone, regardless of whether that person believed in that particular god or not. Where my faith began to strip to nothing was in the inability, and just plain resistance, of every faith I studied to evolve with the knowledge and understanding of the scientific community.

Christianity had become one of my largest studies for this very reason. It seemed to me that as the years had rolled by and the faith had developed, the faith of Christian denominations was driven by the oppression of knowledge. There’s a term that comes across in many pieces of literature, one that’s called the “Christian Dark Ages,” that refers to the gap in science, technology, and development that coincided with the rapid growth of Christianity. The Greeks and the Romans developed scientific principles that were akin to developments made just three-hundred years ago. But then, for almost 1600 years, Christianity carved a hole in development, forcing our technological and scientific advancement to actually fall backwards on itself. This decline pushed humanity back by almost two millennia, with Christians refusing to accept the world was round and killing people who exclaimed otherwise, refusing to accept the Sun was the center of the universe and not the Earth, refusing to accept that women had rights or that people with red hair had souls. The faith, for almost two millennia, was one riddled with oppression that spilled oceans of blood from those who simply asked the question “what if?”

But just because Christianity is the most common religion in the world to date, that in no way means it was the only one operating under these principals of knowledgeable oppression. It was simply the most powerful, the most reaching, and the most influential at the time, making it the most damaging. From the Crusades (both child and adult) to the Spanish Inquisition, Christianity left a river of blood in its wake. And it was with that red-stained earth from the people who, like myself, simply asked the question “Yes, but why is this the way things are?” that my faith was stripped to nothing.

So when I am told that I chose to be an atheist, I get uncharacteristically annoyed. I did not chose this path anymore than I chose to be born or I chose to breathe air in order to survive. This path was simply the one that was laid before me with the sea of questions that I have always been unable to answer, questions that no religion in this world makes an effort to answer, but instead challenges me to accept things for the way they are for reasons that are not backed by factual proof. I did not choose a life driven by questions, and I did not choose to turn to science for my answers instead of God. I simply turned to the only place in the world that, even though it admits it’s often wrong, is constantly trying to prove itself wrong to find out what is actually right. I turned to ever-evolving answers.

But the beauty of my choice, the beauty of my love of faith and the studies I have done throughout my life in trying to find the answers to questions we will not answer for generations after my certain demise, is that my love for all gods has never faded from my heart. I am a realist, one that has high levels of empathy and finds comfort in the happiness of my fellow people. I live my life by a set of strong morals that were taught to me by my parents and evolved due to my understanding of the value of human life. While I may not believe in the god that you believe in, I know him well. And where I know him, I know that if he makes your life better, if he holds answers to the question of what makes your life worth living, then who would I be to ever to take that away from you?

Faith to me, regardless of which one it is or in what corner of the Earth it resides, is an absolutely crucial part of humanity. This is the TCK inside of me, the source of adaptation and understanding, the cultural absorber that adds crucial elements of everywhere he goes into who he is as a person. And while I do not believe in your faith of choice personally, I do not take any comfort in the words of arrogant atheists who scream louder than myself and claim that this world would be better without god. This world would be better without radical extremists of any faith, or without faith, because a militant anything will not stop until they are the only ones left in the pool of opinion. Regardless of whether that person is Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Atheist, if their blood is burning to see something eradicated from this world, they will not stop until they have either removed their “problem” from the face of the planet, or they themselves are removed from the equation. And that hatred, that passion to cause another man harm, that inability to control the rage that flows through you, has nothing to do with god.

And if you doubt the validity in those words, ask that young atheist boy with a head full of questions or that Science and Religion teacher in a school in Hong Kong. Regardless of their beliefs, they will both answer the question of human aggression in exactly the same way; And neither will blame it on God.

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The Author

Author

 

 

 

 

Post by: James R. Mitchener

The Introverted TCK

4 Replies

In many of the posts you have previously read, I have dropped into conversation how I am an introvert. I have made a conscious effort to blend that information into my experiences and give you a taste of what it’s like being both an introvert and a Third Culture Kid, but I can’t seem to shake the feeling that despite how I have described my upbringing and the value I believe it holds in creating the man I am today, many of you are probably reading the word introvert with an incorrect bias that has been crafted in your minds from the clay of countless years of misinformation blurring the true characteristics an introvert possess.

When most people hear the word introvert, their default reaction is to think of someone who is shy. Shyness has nothing to do with introversion. Being shy is a state of fear that’s tied to the way we perceive others judging our behaviour. It’s a completely separate and entirely mental state of being that does not in any way correlate to introversion. There are shy extroverts and there are shy introverts. The only thing is, a shy extrovert is much harder to pick out than a shy introvert, which is why the bias has stuck so well.

I have always said, in all aspects of life, that it’s the radical extremists that get all the attention. When I say I’m an atheist, people think of burning crosses, a hatred for those that believe in a supernatural creator, and a desire to end religion across the world. None of those characteristics describe my atheism, nor do they describe my personality. But that’s what people think, because those atheists are always the loudest, and whoever screams the loudest will always be heard above everyone else.

The problem with introverts is that we are never the loudest. In fact, the idea of standing in a room and yelling at the top of our lungs to grab the attention of the masses juxtaposes everything our natural state of being is about. So when you hear that introverts are shy, don’t like people, and hate leaving the house, these are simply the stigmas put upon us by the extroverts that fail to understand who we are and what fuels our strength.

So what is introversion? To make it as simple to understand as possible, the difference between an introvert and an extrovert is the source at which we draw our energy. Introverts draw their strength from quieter, more isolated environments or one-on-one social interactions while they are drained by loud, packed, highly stimulating environments. Extroverts on the other hand get their strength from high stimulation in the form of loud environments, chaotic moments in time, or social gatherings with many people while they get bored or tired at small social gatherings. That being said, this does not mean that extroverts can’t spend time relaxing at home, and introverts can’t spend a night on the town or at a large social gathering. It simply means that prolonged exposure to the type of event that’s opposite to our natural state of comfort will eventually leave us feeling tired, drained, and generally beaten. We will always need to retreat back to our area of comfort; for extroverts back to high levels of stimulation, and for introverts areas of low level stimulation.

But this isn’t a collection about introverts or extroverts. It’s a collection about Third Culture Kids, regardless of where they draw their energy. But then, it’s also a collection about me, one particular TCK who draws all his strength from writing, being alone, or having long talks with an extremely close friend or romantic partner. But one thing that all introverts very quickly learn as they develop in this world is that in today’s generation, there is very little room for us to be ourselves.

And that is even more of a fundamental truth for an introverted TCK.

The entire TCK process of uprooting, of starting again, of immersing yourself in other cultures forces a conflict within any introverted TCK. That being said, I’m sure it forces a conflict in an extroverted TCK too, but being the massively introverted person I am, it did some truly interesting things to my development into the man I am today. For starters, when I was young, the one thing I hated more than anything in the world was to be around large groups of people. I didn’t enjoy social gatherings like birthday parties, I didn’t like to play group games at school, I didn’t like sleep-overs at friend’s houses, and I hated to be away from my toys and my house and my family. I was comfortable in my own space with my own things around the people I knew well. I didn’t want to be around others, and when I was, I couldn’t do it for very long before my introverted need to be back in my comfort zone kicked in and called me back home.

But with every single move, with every single country I jumped to, with every single uprooting and complete overhaul of my life where I was forced into a new environment with new people and new places, none of which I knew or recognized, my introverted side that was incapable of letting go of what it knew was stripped naked, thrown into a room full of strangers, and told to dance.

One move at a time, I became more and more numb to it all. At first, I handled it with tears. Then, I handled it with aggression. When I moved to Hong Kong, I had already become quite the wordsmith. I could craft sentences with a vastly superior ability to that of my colleagues, and in doing so, I became a verbal bully. Sick of my introverted side ruining my life for the first year of every move, I changed the way I dressed, the way I presented myself, the way I interacted with others to mimic those elements of the “cool group,” or what we as TCKs could coin the “Cool Culture.” I became vindictive, vicious, and malicious with my words, picking apart people’s personalities, beliefs, attire, attitudes, and physical appearances. I was a monster, the person people would come to if they needed someone to be told the truth of a matter. And I hated myself for it. So, halfway through my stay in Hong Kong, I stopped.

When I got back to America, I had already accepted that I was an outsider. I knew that in this land of slightly-varying Christian Gods, I was never going to fit in. So, I pulled the polar opposite of an introvert and made acquaintances with everyone. I had no enemies, no one that I hated and no one that truly hated me. I introduced shaking hands instead of high-fives, answered curious questions with peaceful intentions about my atheism from the sea of Christians that surrounded me and never understood how or why I believed what I did, and I moved like an specter from social circle to social circle. I fit in everywhere, but while I did that, I had no single solid group of friends, no collection of people that would think to call me after school to participate in activities like sports or go see a movie. I just existed, an outsider capable of mixing with everyone.

All the while I was still an introvert. I hated to stand in front of a class of people, I hated to speak about the things I knew or show the knowledge of the world I had acquired. I was terrified of meeting new people, hated attending parties, hated flirting or dating or talking about the history of my life and how I had ended up where I was at the time. And yet, I did it all. I went to parties. I answered all the questions anyone could ask. I met new people. I talked in front of large groups. I mixed with everyone. I lived the life of an extrovert, and I did it perfectly while my body screamed in fear.

Even today, the adult I have become living the confused life of a TCK that has all grown up, I am scared to speak to anyone I do not know. If it were up to me, I would stay in my apartment all day. I would never go out. I would write in the comfort of my confined space with the company of my dog. I would not try to make friends, friends that I will inevitably say goodbye to. I would not push myself to come across as an extrovert in every aspect of my work.

But it’s not up to me.

Thanks to a lifetime of being dragged around the world, this TCK is in constant internal struggle with himself. On one end, there’s a child screaming in fear begging me not to go out and socialize, not to talk to the random person in the bar, not to go into the room with the loud music or the conference room full of people older and more experienced than myself, to never open my mouth and voice the knowledge I have acquired over the years. It’s begging me to just be quiet, to shut myself away, to recharge my batteries. But my introverted side always loses.

Because now, I’m a 25 year old Third Culture Kid. And with all I’ve seen, with all I’ve experienced, I just cannot bear to let that side of me that wants to disappear take control. There’s too much world out there that I haven’t experienced, too many people I have yet to meet, too many cultures I have yet to absorb.

So while I may have been an introvert as a child, and my personality tests will say that I am still very much one today, my desire to fade into the background does not control me. I am a Third Culture Kid, and I am driven by change.

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The Author

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Post by: James R. Mitchener

From Home to Discovery

9 Replies

When I was in university, I was asked to do a visual exercise that was to detail the limits of our memory and the power of our imagination. I was asked to think about my home, and imagine a car. I was told to climb into that car, and start driving away from my house. Where I went wasn’t important, but I had to drive away from my home, and I had to continue driving in that same direction away from my house for as long as I could. We were given several minutes to think about the scenario, and when the timer ran out, we were told to write down our imaginary drive so that we could share it with the class and see how far we had each made it along the road of memory’s imagination.

Everyone in my class in Texas made it far. But they all made it right from the central point of a home that existed within that state, within that city. For me, the question itself had fundamental and confusing issues. Did they want to know about my drive from my birth country of England? Did they want to know about my current house in Houston? Or did they want to know about the other corners of the world that I considered equally as influential in my development as any other I’d resided in? Without knowing the answer, I chose them all.

Before I begin my drive, my brother and I run from the door and head straight for the tree that seems to always be in blossom, tiny white buds of fur that resemble caterpillars creeping from the branches until they grow too heavy and fall to the grass beneath our feet. Together, my brother and I run three circles around the tree before returning to the door, hopping across the concrete-rainbows that separate the grass of the garden from the walkway to the car. Once in the car, we reverse from the drive and pass the complex where we go to see the dentist. We drive along winding roads and past fields and tress until we arrive at the all-to-small road that leads to my grandparent’s house. Down lanes barely big enough for a single car, we soar past oncoming vehicles that run off into the shoulder to avoid collision, just as we have done. Just after we pass the oldest dove house in the world, we pull onto a road that winds past several pubs, including The Pineapple. Entering Dorney Common, we slow to a stop to allow the cows to cross the road. When they have made their rounds, we continue on into Eton Wick, Windsor Castle in sight not more than a thirty minute walk away, and turn down Queens Road to my Granny and Grandad’s home.

As a family, we step into the elevator and my brother and I fight over who gets to push the button to go to the ground floor. I win, being older, unless my mother explicitly tells me not to push the button, and even then I may slip an arrogant and defiant jab at the ground floor to beat my brother.  In mere seconds, we arrive at the bottom of the building and walk past the gateway to the garage and start our trek down the hill, past a pile of rocks that we had salvaged for stones to allow our terrapins to sunbathe in the warm, incandescent lighting of our apartment. When we reach the bottom of the hill, we step into a red taxi and continue our trip towards downtown, soaring along roads far too narrow for any car to handle within the bounds of normal human safety. When we arrive downtown, we walk to the bank and pass by two enormous stone statues of Fu Dogs, where my brother and I climb upon their bodies and try to scale them to their heads. After the bank, we move through crowded city streets and make our way to the peak tram, passing through a park with a mushroom waterfall that, through age, no longer possesses a safe and dry approach to its center. Together, my brother and I attempt to dodge through the scattered droplets that fall upon us, then run back to our mother. Climbing onto the tram, we rush to seats that are positioned flat with the floor of the tram, but are slanted backwards to almost 45 degree angles thanks to the extreme incline of the tracks.

My brother and I climb into the captain’s chairs of an enormous van parked in the driveway of our suburban house. Our father finishes loading the cooler between our two seats, then he and my mother get into the front and pull out of the drive. We head towards the freeway, driving up into the air on an elevated crossing before veering right and entering the on-ramp of a three lane freeway heading towards San Antonio. We drive for what feels like days, but in reality is only a few hours. The road is straight, flat, and plain. The heat of the road makes the hills look like water is resting on the concrete a few hundred feet ahead. As we get closer, the mirage vanishes and we are left with waves of heat that pass us by. When we arrive in San Antonio, we drop off the car and start walking to the River Walk, a man-made structure of nearly stagnant water that brings tourists to San Antonio without anything more to offer them. I think nothing of the place, and continue on in childhood ignorance.

I sit on a bus passing French buildings and tiny Renault Twingos. The trees rush by my window, their branches occasionally scratching along the side as we dart down the suburban streets outside of Paris and head towards our school. When we arrive, the gate slides open, razor-wire lining the perimeter, and we drive into the compound that is the American School of Paris. Large aircraft hangers that are now gyms are scattered across the campus, long buildings that were formerly offices but now house classrooms for students sit peacefully in the center. There’s history here, the history of an American military base that now is home to the education of TCKs in a land they don’t belong.

I ride a bus alone, darting down faintly-memorable roads of a city I once lived in years before, one that rests in my mind like a drunken dream, a chaotic haze of flashes in time. I feel the weight of the bus tip as we pull around tight cliff corners, and I look out over the water that surrounds the tiny island I live upon. Around me is nothing but trees, rock walls, and water, but then out of nowhere a skyline appears, and I am driving down Queens Road and pulling up to the stop that connects Queens Road to the fish market. I walk from here, the smell of rotting flesh and neglected garbage wafting into my nostrils, a smell I have become so familiar with over the years that I smile. I look up into the sky as I walk and see the signs that will soon be illuminated in the night, but currently hang lifeless and old, a mess of clutter blocking out the sky that slices between the buildings of compact streets.

I am driving now, back in Texas and sitting behind the wheel. I’m heading back from college in San Antonio to visit my parents, taking the same straight and boring road I have driven dozens of times before. I listen to music loudly as I ignore the lifeless and uninspired flatness that surrounds me. I am sad, but I am hiding it well. I miss the world, I miss the culture, and I miss the life of my youth. I want to be on a plane, I want to travel the planet again, to see the things I never saw before in the places I never had the time to visit. I want to be free again, free to get up and go and do whatever I can wherever I land. But I am stuck, stuck in school and knowing that when I have finished my education, I will be stuck in a job, a prisoner to a life and a world that doesn’t understand a man like me.

I am all grown up now. I am in my job and I have finished my school. And I have moved, but I have moved from a city that didn’t understand me to one that understands me even less. As I sit in my car and drive the three miles to work and back every day, I think back to a question my professor once asked me in college: “How far can you drive before you can’t remember what the next part of the road looks like? Tell me about the drive you remember.”

I smile to myself, because I know now that she missed the entire point of the question she was asking. So I ask the question she should have asked, but one she never would have understood, to you, the only group of people who can grasp the depth of what I am asking:

How far do you have to drive away from your memories until you are free to discover the world you do not know? Tell me about the unknown.

_________

The Author

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Post by: James R. Mitchener

A TCK Goodbye

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The TCK GoodbyeI think that the silent enemy of every Third Culture Kid I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, both in person and digitally, is buried deep within the moment we pride ourselves on handling better than anyone. I don’t like the term “we’re only human,” because honestly, I don’t believe in universal truths when it comes to human behavior, but I do know that the issue in question is one that affects a great deal of people in this world, TCKs not excluded despite what we may want you to believe. Just like everyone else, perhaps more so for reasons we hide so very well our entire lives, we are in constant battle with Goodbye.

Goodbye for TCKs is a drastically different thing to what it is for First Culture Kids. At the risk of over-generalizing yet again, FCKs have a tendency to treat goodbyes with extreme finality. The weight of loss that couples a goodbye appears to be so much heavier for them, and as that goodbye grows with the reality of that finality, for example a death instead of a departure or an increase in distance, that weight appears to become unbearable. TCKs, on the other hand, seem to handle those goodbyes with a more nonchalant approach. But appearances are often deceptive at the best of times.

TCKs have had a lifetime full of loss. Some TCKs, like myself, may have been fortunate so far in their lives in terms of the permanent loss of death’s heavy hand, but there are other TCKs who have experienced it plenty. But despite the permanent loss, the number of goodbyes we’re faced with in just a few years are larger than most FCKs deal with across the span of their entire lives. And more often than not, those goodbyes are just as permanent as the finality of life’s end.

But for me, those goodbyes are handled so differently than the goodbyes of my FCK friends and family. I believe I have told the story before of when I left San Antonio on my most recent move and the way I handled that long string of multiple goodbyes, but for the sake of my point, I will tell it one more time. When I left San Antonio, I did so in what I consider to be the best way to handle goodbyes based on a massive history of goodbyes. I know that to me, saying goodbye to my friends that I have grown to love over the years is just a natural state of affairs. Nothing is permanent, and all great things pass eventually. So I handled the goodbye with a quiet, sneaky twist.

I invited everyone out, some in groups, some on their own. I told them I had plans to move, I said I’d be leaving soon, but never gave a date. I rounded them up, saw them all, and left every night saying “Yea, we’ll have to get together and have a big haza before I leave! I’ll give you a call before I go and let you know when I’m actually off. We’ll get together again before I get going, so don’t worry.” And then I never called. That was it. That was their goodbye.

I did this because I knew that saying goodbye for many FCKs is an awkward experience. The knowledge that most of them, if not all of them, would probably never see me again in their lives is an odd thing for anyone to process. We’d spent years developing that friendship, and while I’m not claiming to be the most impacting force in their lives, there’s always a sense of regret associated with saying goodbye to anyone you’ve established a relationship with.

The only person that got a real goodbye, or more the only person that I wanted to give a real goodbye to and never got to due to her busy schedule, was Erika. She has been quoted in this collection before, or perhaps The Illusive Home, under a different name. Possibly Elizabeth, but I can’t quite remember. She was the first girl I ever lived with, the first girl I thought “I will marry this one,” and even when all of that was behind us, she was the most influential and shaping person in my life. There are exceptions that prove every rule, and she’s my exception to my rule of goodbyes.

The level of understanding “goodbyes” that can be found in most TCKs, or perhaps just  this particular TCK, extends further than just saying goodbye to friends. Goodbyes come in so many forms, and one of the most interesting to me is the finality of death. That goodbye, more often than not, comes silently and sneakily, snatching life away in an instant. At least, that was the case for both of my most recent and highly life-altering losses, my Grandmother, Anne Mitchener, and my cousin, Jack Allison.

At both of these events, I held my ground better than I expected. I watched as my family crumbled, as tears were shed and as people mourned the loss of truly incredible people who should never have had to leave this world. But, like all amazing things in life, everything has an end just as definitively as it has a beginning. Even now, I have friends and family both that will break down and cry at the loss of both Granny and Jack, more-so Jack these days given his recent and tragic passing. The total sense of loss, the ultimate goodbye that was never said, it has broken many of my FCK family and friends so severely that it looks like they will never come back together. Of course, they will find the pieces one day. Eventually, everyone is at least partially consoled. But right now, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

What shocked me, though, was how both my brother and I handled the situation. We were the buffers of the family. The ones that kept it together, held our own, and didn’t break down. I had a drunken moment with my cousin, Gregg, where I lost it, but the truth is I wasn’t losing it because of Jack, I was losing it because of how broken the family I love and know so little about had become. That was what hurt me. Empathy, more than anything, cut me to my core. But the loss, the lack of a goodbye to my baby cousin whom I loved so completely, that part didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as I had expected.

Why? Because like many TCKs in this world, I have learned more about goodbyes than anyone should ever know. I can taste their inevitability from the moment we meet. I can read them in passing words that others would miss. I can predict their arrival no matter how far down the line of life they will fall. I am always, always ready for them. And so when we lost Jack, when we lost Granny, the moment of goodbye was done. And while everyone was devastated he wasn’t there, that they couldn’t have just one more moment, that they never had a chance to say goodbye, I was fine with my memory. Because to me, to this TCK, a goodbye is just a door being closed, an isolation of memories, an acceptance that there will never be another created for as long as we live.

But the way I see it, whether we’ll meet again or not, that goodbye isn’t the end. If you simply don’t want to see me, or perhaps no longer walk this world, the end result is always the same. I am a TCK, and I have lived my entire life in a string of relationships that last not much longer than the passing of a season. But just because that relationship has floated on in terms of time spent face-to-face, the moments we shared have shaped me into a different person, and pieces of you will live on with me forever. In that single season, in just one tiny conversation, you changed me for the better. And even if we are never to cross paths again, I will carry you for the rest of my life, and share what you taught me with others.

In the end, I will always keep you with me, and the lives of those I meet will be made better because of the time we spent together. And that’s my TCK goodbye.

_________

The Author

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Post by: James R. Mitchener