Tag Archives: expatriate

The Price We Pay

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Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This is a simple law of existence, a governing rule of the universe. You cannot have a push without a pull, a cause without an effect, an action without a reaction. Everything is perfectly balanced. For everything we gain, we lose something of equal value in return. It’s simply the price of life. The thing that you lose may not be something you even notice. It might not even be something you cared about. But it is weighted evenly with your gain, and so the trade is made all the same.

For Third Culture Kids, that give and take is one of the largest forces that have shaped us into the multi-cultural creatures we are. In growing up around the world, we have gained culture. We have gained world experience. We have gained knowledge and pride and level of understanding in people that’s almost completely unmatched by any other type of person on the planet. We have gained an insight into the “big picture,” along with ways to explain it and justify all that we know. We have gained the ability to up and move to a country that would terrify others. We have gained the ability to let go, to move on, and to experience the world through a lens shared only by other TCKs.

We have been given the entire world.

And that is the cause leading to our effect. We have been given so much, and so we must give up just as much as well. And in a world where family has always been the most important thing in existence, since the dawn of humanity, we have given up that very thing that keeps us connected to everyone else. We have lost our family. We have lost our home. We have lost what makes us relatable to everyone else on Earth. We have lost our sense of community.

It has been two years today since my grandmother passed away. She had cancer of the everything. It took her by surprise. We didn’t know until it was too late, and when we knew she was gone 5 days later. It all happened on this day, 730 days in the past. I got in a plane two days after it happened. I flew back to England with my cousins who were staying with my family in America. They were younger, all three of them below the age of 18. So I took them home, and waited with my grandfather until my parents arrived.

They asked me to do the Eulogy.  Well, they didn’t ask, they just sort of assumed I was going to do it. It makes sense, I suppose, with me being the writer and the oldest grandchild. But like I’ve said before in The Illusive Home and in this very post, nobody understands a Third Culture Kid other than another TCK. The only other TCK in my life at that time was my brother, and he was not in attendance at the funeral. He had just changed schools and couldn’t miss his first day, and so I stood alone in the crematorium at a pedestal in front of over 250 people and talked about my role model, Anne Mitchener.

And here’s the kicker. Here’s what no one else seems to understand, and yet what every TCK that is reading this blog already sees and understands completely. I was talking about a woman who I idealized, but hardly knew. My cousins who sat in the audience, my mother and father, my grandfather, my aunt and uncle, even my ex-girlfriend (who I had not started dating at the time) were closer to my grandmother than I had ever been. They knew her in a way I never could. They knew her as a caregiver, as an integral part of their lives that was always there. They knew her as a home they could drive to and visit, as a person that never missed a birthday and gave them pocket money every week. They knew her as someone that “just stopped by” their home. They knew her as Granny.

And there is the greatest trade and largest sacrifice of my life. The woman I loved and respected I knew no better than someone who I hoped to see once a year for a couple of weeks at most. Sometimes, I didn’t even get that. In fact, at the time of her passing, it had been two years since I’d seen her, three since my brother had seen her. And because I was in university and didn’t have a phone capable of making long distance calls, I would Skype-call their home once every few months at most.

That’s the price we pay. It’s here that all the benefits of being a TCK come crashing down. I’m telling you this because, even though I love my life and am so proud of the experiences I’ve been fortunate enough to have, I sit and wonder every single day of my life: “What would my life be if I’d never left the United Kingdom?”

The thing is, I’ll never know.

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Dedicated to the memory of Anne Mitchener, my Granny, the most amazing woman I never really got to know, and with whom I wish, every single day, that I had gotten to have just one more conversation.

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Post by: James R. Mitchener

A Skipping Stone

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I have this problem where I can’t seem to stop hopping across the pond. Well, I call it a problem, but it’s not really a problem, more of a habit. Well, it’s not really a habit, more of an addiction. I can’t help it, I just like to travel. And we’re not talking about getting in a car in Houston, Texas and driving down one road for 200 miles until I hit San Antonio, then veering North for another hour until I hit Austin. We’re talking world travel. You know, that thing that involves the giant metal sardine can that piles in people, their bags, and sometimes their pets and sends them soaring into the sky at 400-500mph across a giant body of water or an entire continent until you land somewhere completely different several drinks and bad movies later.

I’m bringing this up because I’m going back to England in a month. I was going to go look for a job there, you know, one of those permanent ones where I go to an office and do the same thing every day for the rest of my life? One of those. It kills me just to think about being stuck like that, but sometimes you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. Plus, what with the riots going on there right now I’m sure I’ll get hazard pay for working in London. That place is like a third world country right now. That’s also part of why it’s so alluring to me right now. Other reasons involve the fact that I’ve never spent much time with any of my family as I grew up, primarily because they lived in one country and I lived in 15 different ones. Another reason would be that I’m in love with an English girl, but that’s a whole different story for a whole different life.

So I’m hopping the pond. I do it a lot, really. Well, as often as I can. A lot is a matter of reference, and seeing as I technically don’t have a job and just travel and help SMBs or write content or book travel or create marketing strategies when there’s work to be done, I travel a lot for me. I miss it when I don’t. It comes over me like an illness, or better yet, like a man kicking an addiction or habit. I recently quit smoking (2 weeks today), so I know the feeling of shaking an addiction-habit very well. If I don’t travel, I go through these steps:

1) I start to get antsy. I feel like a prisoner to my home (one of the best things about not having a home is when this step comes up I can just switch locations). I need to get out, to go somewhere, to just drive my car in any direction and go. And usually I do. It puts the feeling at bay for a while, but it always comes back later, stronger and more commanding than the time before.

2) I get mad. Really mad. I start hating the country I’m in, I hate my house, I find reasons to hate my friends. Sometimes I even hate Rogue, my beautiful Corgi-Lab mix. Of course, that doesn’t last long. But the rest of it does, and it bleeds into my life, telling me I hate my job and that the grass is so much greener somewhere else. I actually start to believe that if I were to just drop it all and get on a plane everything would be fine. That’s why I got Rogue, actually. She stops me leaving.

3) I get depressed. Unbelievably depressed to the point that I think everything is hopeless. I’ll never get to travel again, I’ll never make enough money to have the life I want, I start believing I’m valueless and that it’s impossible for me to achieve the life I used to have as a kid. Of course, none of this is true, I travel all the time, having published works has proven I’m a strong writer, and happy clients proves I am good at my roles as an online marketing consultant.

4) I go. This is the kicker. I always end up going. Somehow, I end up hopping on a plane and crossing the pond for no apparent reason. Mostly it is to England, and a big part of that is family and romance, but I always end up going. And when I’m there, it really does take every single inch of self control to get back on that plane and come back to America. The hardest part, every single time, is leaving.

And that’s why I travel. Sure, I do it because I want to. I do it because I love to. But honestly, deep down in the core of my existence where the little ideas that drive us to live the lives we lead, I have a tiny little man constantly whispering “Isn’t it time you went somewhere else, James?” And in all my life, I’ve never been able to ignore him. Of course, if I could, why would I ever want to?

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Post by: James R. Mitchener

A Little About Life

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This isn’t a blog about what Third Culture Kids are. Well, I suppose it is. But it’s not a direct definition of us or our perceptions of the universe. I did that in The Illusive Home. It did well, got a lot of attention, but it was just a demo piece to a larger work. I realized though, starting the larger work, that it really needed more development. A little tweak to the story development, maybe a flair of something more human. But the human element wasn’t enough. Ignorance or standard description would have never cut it. It needed the flair of a Third Culture Kid (TCK).

So this time, I’m going to write about the life of a grown-up Third Culture Kid. This is me: I’m 24 years old. I’m a freelance content writer. I’m a travel agent. I’m a Search Marketing specialist. I’m a Social Media Business Consultant. I’m a traveller. I’m an English Citizen. I’m an American Citizen Applicant. I’m a dog lover. I’m a thinker. I’m a knowledge collector. I’m an information gatherer. I’m a novelist. I’m a fiction writer. I’m a non-fiction writer. I’m a fantasy writer. I’m a big-picture-thinker. I am a person-reader, a seer, or simply intuitive. I have no home. Seriously, I have no home; I live between four different residences. I am a 24 year-old Third Culture Kid.

I was born in England. Milton Keynes, to be exact. I moved to Hong Kong when I was a baby. Then to Singapore. Then back to England for the birth of my brother, Robert, when I was two. Then off to Hong Kong when I was four. Then the USA at seven. Then Paris, France. Then Hong Kong again. Then Houston in the US. Then San Antonio. Now I live in New Braunfels, Texas; San Antonio, Texas; Houston, Texas; and soon Eton Wick, England.

I work several jobs. I got a double concentration Bachelor of Arts Degree in English: Emphasis in Creative and Professional Writing. I did this for two reasons. The first was because I absolutely love writing. I’m also pretty good at it when I have a strong idea that I just can’t shake. The other reason was because I’m a communicator. In fact, communication is my fifth strength as seen in the Strengths Finder 2.0 test. My top five are Strategic, Maximizer, Ideation, Input, and Communication. Strategic means I’m a big picture thinker. Maximizer means I don’t waste time completing something, but instead find the most optimal and beneficial path for all parties involved so that we get the most out of it. Ideation means I’m extremely creative. Input means I see things more than just at face value and can provide ideas. And the one that brings them all together is Communication, meaning that I can not only do all those things, but I can explain exactly why I did them.

Those traits, those top 5, are very uncommon together. They are seen in only one group of people. They are seen in TCKs.

Why am I writing this? Because the world needs to know what it’s like being in our minds. Third Culture Kids are often extremes. We almost never sit in the middle. We are either extremely introverted or extroverted. We are either loud or quiet. We are either noticed or hidden. But we are never flip floppers. We know what we believe and we stick to it. Why? Because we have lived in so many places, seen so many different cultures, lost so many friends throughout our lives that we are conditioned to believe that our lives are always going to be that way.

That’s why I don’t have a home. That’s why I don’t hold one job, but instead do three, four, five, ten, twenty different things in a day. I do it because I am completely addicted to change. So that’s why I’m writing this blog. I’m writing this blog so you can see what happens to one type of Third Culture Kid when he grows up. And I hope you see what I want to convey. Because to many people, I look like a mess. It’s chaotic and crazy, full of random little self destructive elements that make my life constantly changing. But you know what? I wouldn’t change it for the world. Being a Third Culture Kid is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

So if you want to know who we are in a textbook format, read The Illusive Home. If you’re like me, and you want to know the way a person’s brain works, through-and-through, then come here. Here I will show you the Life of a Third Culture Kid when he’s no longer that sad and lonely little boy being forced to travel around the world.

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Post by: James R. Mitchener