24 hours
Monday, September 12th, 2011
Time is what prevents everything from happening at once. ~John Archibald Wheeler
You know we expats are always talking about how different our lives are from friends and family back home. We describe how our schedules have changed, how we manage our homes differently and of course how we eat differently. With the start of school (yippee!) and hearing about everyone else’s changes and transitions, I noticed that our lives are so much more alike than I had previously realized. It’s fragile. We have happy times, sad times and bored times. Also, everything can change in 24 hours.
From hearing about a Facebook friend who realized how much her life had changed since her last status update 18 hours before, to reading about people who are affected by another sudden tragedy; people’s lives are in constant flux. This is true whether you’re rich, poor, living abroad or living in the same place you grew up. Someone once made the analogy to me that life is like when you’re in the bathtub with a bunch of floating balls and you’re trying to keep all of them underwater. Right when you’ve got all of them under control, one pops up. Sometimes the ball that pops up can easily be handled with a slight maneuver. However, sometimes getting a handle of it means letting go of all the others. Regardless of a person’s exterior circumstances, which is basically what living abroad is, dealing with sudden changes can be very difficult. Traumatic even.
So, I’ve decided that next time someone is asking me about how different my life must be living abroad, I’m going to remind them that we go through the same emotions as everyone else. I’m living a life very similar to theirs; I’m simply doing it at a different geographic coordinate.
