The Return of the Pope

Coming back is as traumatic as going. Probably in the same proportion. The trauma of coming back will be as traumatic as the trauma of leaving. Of course this will depend a lot on how much of a melodramatic person you are. Me? Personally, I’m not.

I can also tell you being in the middle of a traumatic experience is not a reliable source of the significance of either the going or coming. That only comes with reflection.

This only counts for traumatic experiences. A traumatic experience only allows you to deal with the trauma at the time and only reflection allows you to analyze. You have to analyze, because people want to know how it affected you. How are you different today then you were when you left? What happened to you? They watch how you act and physically look. They wonder if you’re different. One of the ways you can tell if it was a traumatic experience is that you are never the same afterward.

The process of going leaves marks. You don’t leave behind everything you know and understand without feeling loss. The feeling of loss does not occur until after you’re gone. This is because you don’t know what you have until you don’t have it any more. You can say, “I’ll miss you”, but you don’t feel it until you’re gone.

There are some easy things to discuss when you come back. Weather, food and language are a few of those. Feelings are not. How to be fair about both cultures. Biases exist and you don’t want to insult anyone. What the cultures do to you, is harder.

Most of the time the discussions come down to differences and similarities. But this is not a fair methodology. Cultures and people are more complicated than this. You have to consider ambitions, desires, and tastes. The world is so intertwined it is not easy to see the pureness of a culture.

Contrasts are easier to see the closer you are to the experience. Live too long in one or the other and you lose perspective. This is because the differences are most noticeable in the beginning.

The more we try to be different the more we are becoming the same. I mean the human race. Deep down we have probably always been basically the same. Sure we look different: white or brown, tall or short, fat or skinny. I’m talking about the inside. Didn’t God make us all? Yes, people act differently as a result of thinking differently, but the motivation?

I guess what I’m trying to say is, we all do the same things for the same reasons. It doesn’t matter where you live. The difficulty is understanding this in context of the culture. We are all alike. Deep down. Every where else, we are different. We focus so much on the outside, which is easy, and forget about the inside. I think I’ve learned it is easier to be accepting of another culture if you don’t focus on the outside, but the inside. I wish I had internalized that lesson earlier in life.

GP