SLOW

Stranieri Ovunque

image credit  –  La Biennale di Venezia

“Don’t judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.”

We think in kilometres these days but you get my drift.

What’s in a word?

I’ve been watching ‘Expats‘ the six part series set in Hong Kong. It’s got me thinking about life on the move and what some others might imagine that looks like.

We’ve spent most of the last 20 years not living in our passport country. So when I tuned in to this series, I wondered how much of it we would relate to.

The answer was, not much at all.

The show presents an expat family. The mother Margaret, played by Nicole Kidman, has put her career on hold, while her husband pursues opportunities. The family have a live in maid, who cooks, cleans and takes care of the kids. There’s also a driver.

In the second episode we watch as they attend a party on a yacht in the harbour. It’s fancy. And I think back, did we ever do the same?

As teachers working in international schools we didn’t move with the ‘movers and shakers’. We probably taught a lot of their children but we didn’t have access to that world of super-yachts, glitz and glamour.

We never have a maid or a driver. We did have a cleaner, a nice Nepalese guy, who let himself in once each week and cleaned the apartment while we were at work. That felt like a luxury, to have that help and return from work to the smell of clean floors.

Our rented apartments were always paid for by our employers but they were not in high rise,  luxury buildings.

We often said that the five day working week was much the same as anywhere else, just in another place: alarm clocks, dry cleaning, preparing lunch boxes and many evenings spent planning for the next day at work. And then there were the stressful times, problems with passes and permits, visa runs and shipments.

I wonder if that’s what others think of when you talk of an expat life?

I’m thinking of a close friend, one who often speaks of ‘a Facebook life’, you know, the one that people see, the posts you share, the photos of fun and celebrations.

Could some people actually think that’s how you live all the time?

As I watched more episodes what really resonated with me was the loneliness that many of the characters were working through. You often make connections quickly but then there’s that ‘revolving door’. Someone is always moving on. Sometimes that someone is you and you have to leave behind people that you’ve come to know and love. I’m reminded of that quote you see doing the rounds on socials

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”  – Miriam Adeney