Belonging

I don’t think the title of this post needs much explanation. As social animals, people need to belong: to their family, to their football club, to their city or village, to their nation, etc. The way that we belong, and what we feel we belong to, defines us. We belong where our childhood memories are, whether they are good or bad. We belong where people understand us.

Belonging is not a conscious process, we cannot willingly chose to belong, at least not truly. It starts with our birth and is imprinted on us through our environment while growing up. In adulthood our choices influence the belonging. If we chose to work in one company instead of another, this choice will influence it, but will not be driven by the need to belong particularly to that community, at least for most people the motivation for choices in life lies elsewhere.
So, what happens when you cut all the bonds and move away from your home country? Of course, the feeling of belonging does not exist in the new foreign world. Its ugly step sisters insecurity, nationalism, criticism take over.
How many foreigners do you know who do not take every chance available to criticise the ways, customs and people of the place they live in? As the feeling of belonging is not there, fear and isolation build a nest for overtly critical view of everything that surrounds us. We cannot just embrace everything that is so new and often extremely foreign to us, even though we have chosen it.

But, after many years of living abroad, a moment of epiphany comes, when you realise that you no longer belong that much to your home country, because you have accepted the habits, ways and values of your new home. You start belonging nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

The story of a jobstealer

If you live in a developed country, you are probably familiar with the fact that some people from abroad have moved to your neighbourhood. They speak a different language and look different. They have odd habits and the smells from their kitchen are sometimes strange. They tend to have a thick accent, and sometimes can hardly speak the language. What the heck, you think to yourself, why do they even come here if they can’t even speak the language? And in the newspaper there are sometimes articles on how they come to steal the jobs of your compatriots, how some of them steal and do other types of crimes. It feels that every day more and more of them are coming.

I am one of them, one of the foreigners who live in your country. It is awfully annoying that the stereotypes mentioned above exist, but I will not deny them, nor alienate myself from them. On the contrary, I will tell you how I came to your country to steal your job, and other stories.