Let me first give you a little context for this post, sprung several days ago from one of my girlhood memories, when I would sit and pull petals off a flower (as I suspect did most every other girl growing up in the U.S.), saying “He loves me, he loves me not”, waiting to see what this petal wheel of fate would bestow on me in the end.
It is now ninety days until the Big Move, and I am awash in a sea made up of equal parts logistical details and mixed emotions that are continuously changing! Both my left and right brains are in overdrive, and to say it’s intense would be an understatement.
Leaving one’s homeland to take up permanent residence in another country, and a developing country at that, is more than a notion (though I understand that
“emerging country” is now more PC). Those commercial enterprises which shall remain unnamed that extol the benefits of moving to another country and culture often paint an idyllic picture of life happily ever after leaving this materialistic, consumeristic, politically hamstrung, “tax-burdened” first world country we know as the United States.
However, I’m here to testify that the process (at least for this one) – both internal and external – is much more complex. At this stage of the game I’d say sweet melancholy, exhaustion as in the “tired and wired” variety, intermittent frustration and exasperation all interspersed with brief flashes of anticipatory excitement most accurately describe my state of mind and being.
Case in point: Always wanting to be ahead of the game and avoid future problems if I possibly can (as the Enneagram Six and Virgo Rising I am), I decided to order the documents required for the residency visa (including birth and marriage certificates and professional diplomas) 4 months ahead of our arrival in Ecuador. Makes sense, don’t ya think?
After all, our various documents needed to be issued by four different states, each of which has different processes and fees for getting your hands on internationally notarized copies of these precious documents. Hours of phone calls, various online applications, some hard copy letters, and multiple small fees later, I am happy I’ve taken care of this one project.
Silly me. Forgetting that I was dealing with an emerging country where delays and redundancy and ever-changing bureaucratic mandates are the norm, I thought being efficient would be rewarded!
Sure enough, I got my cultural smack upside the head when two weeks after going through the hours of phone calls, on-line applications, dutiful submission of all the required fees AND actually receiving two of the required documents, our lawyer informed me that the brand spanking new government regulation now required the reissue and apostillation of the marriage certificate to be NO MORE than 90 days prior to the visa application.
Please, and politely now, go back to GO.
United States, I love you for your efficient, well-developed, and standardized systems (relatively speaking of course). Ecuador, I love you not.
And yet, when I look at my Ecuador photos, remember the magic of being enveloped by the Andes, and recall the warm and helpful embrace of us as family by those Ecuadorians I have met, I am filled with a sense of heart and connection that has so often eluded me here in the U.S. without significant effort. Ecuador, I love you; United States, I love you not for I weary from your overemphasis on rugged individualism, materialism, and disconnection from a sense of the greater good.
Of course, as with anything, there are trade-offs. I’m sure there are things to love and almost-hate in each country. Things I will be glad to have distance from and things I will miss terribly (my local coffee shop where I like to write, my knitting group, Middle Eastern foods that are the staple of my current cooking repertoire, my favorite places to shop, choice and variety). Note: I’m not including friends and family near and dear because I won’t miss them but because I miss them no matter where I am physically located.
Yet, I crave new possibilities, adventure, and growth. Much as I love my knitting group and the non-profit organizations on whose boards I serve, I’m not ready – and don’t know that I ever will be – to slide into the still predominant retirement paradigm of volunteering and hobbies.
Growth always requires getting out of one’s comfort complacency zone. It’s easy to think that it’s harder or scarier to undertake a grand new adventure when you hit 60 (or 50 or whatever your mental programming is), but it’s an illusion. I feel exactly the same now as I did when I left Harvard in the middle of my junior year having hit an internal impasse to go live in London and “find myself.”
There I explored (sometimes nervously), discovered, found fellow travelers, and encountered myself and others in totally new ways, at the same time appreciating fully just how American I truly was. I came back to the U.S. enlivened and expanded, able to see and engage with opportunities and people of which I had been completely unaware heretofore. I expect this to happen once again on this next trans-continental adventure.
I will always be grateful that I was born and raised in America and received all the benefits and societal supports we take for granted. Yet once again a couple of years ago, my husband and I both hit a sense of limitation and once again, the time has come – bittersweet as it is – to move on. Thankfully, I get daily feedback allowing me to experience the fruits of growth and change that are being precipitated by the emotional rollercoaster of this transition.
While there are lots of great immersion “growth” workshops and I’ve done my fair share of them, I think expatriating has to be near the top of the list as a real life way to expand one’s consciousness. And unlike a workshop, this will have have lasting consequences!
On the personality level, I love this process NOT. But on the not easily verbalized soul level, I know I must love the enlivenment of having to confront head on my particular personality traps and fixations while at the same time honoring the stew of rich emotions, surrendering to a more intuitive trust of the process, and finding that inner center where the quiet excitement and intimations of a new life corral the inner bucking horse of “I love you, I love you not”.
And thus we move more or less steadily and inexorably towards a new land
What insights are you gleaning as you journey to new lands, be they actual or metaphorical?
Wonderful to see the start of your new blog! I discovered one you might find interesting, called Franco American Flophouse. Lots on being an American living in another country. I respect her voice. Lots of luck to you, Marcia
Thank you and thanks for the suggestion, Marcia!
Manya: I love your posts. Your writing is beautiful and seems to get deeper and more poetic with each new entry. I am pleased to have known you through many of your transitions. You have your own unique way of setting up challenges, and meeting and growing from them. Many blessings as you and James navigate this latest one. I am pleased to be along for the ride.
Thank you, dear old friend. Forty years later, it is good to remember that we are still in the same “Karass” (do your remember that wonderful term coined by Kurt Vonnegut?).
Amazing, the laws, bureaucracy & fitfulness of attempting to have all things in order, yet this too shall pass, as it seems to read in the undercurrent of your post. Perhaps the majesty of the header of your new blog/website is the overarching point going with your travelogue / transition story. Whichever it is, I look forward to the “flow” of it! Congrats on your artful leap into this new adventure, Manya!
Thanks, Deb. As we know from coaching, writing is a wonderful tool for gaining objectivity about one’s being and experience:-)