On Returning Home

The following is a letter I wrote to my son towards the end of his Year of Service between high school and college.

Dear son:

Now that your arrival is only two weeks away, I would like to share a few thoughts on returning home, for whatever they are worth, harvested from my own and others’ experiences in that field. It is something you look forward to the entire time you are away, but the actual return can be sweet, bitter-sweet, or just plain bitter, depending on how you and your fremly prepare inwardly for it. Let me start by summarizing the first and most important lesson I myself, your Mother and many of our friends have learned: THERE IS NO SUCH THING. Why not? Let me try to explain.

It’s not that the place and people are no longer there. Coming home is not just about traveling to a physical place where you were before you left. Rather, it has to do with that nostalgic need for things to be again the way they were before you left, missing what you knew in the past and wanting to go back there as if in a time machine. That former situation is what no longer exists. You can’t even pick up where you left off, because neither you nor anyone else are still where you were when you left off. Life never goes backward, only forward; and forward is where your home has gone and where you must go in order to find it.

And that’s not all. While you were growing up, you formed an image in your mind and heart of the people and places around you, not as they were, but as you saw them through your filters, which were based on who and how you were at that time. Now, not only have those places and people changed, but more importantly, who you are has changed, and that has changed your filters. It’s sort of like remembering everything green and then going back and seeing it all red, because you changed your green shades for red ones.

Another way of putting it is that before, you experienced home from the inside out, like a fish that doesn’t know he is in the water because he has never been out of it and has nothing to compare it to. Now, having been part of a different culture for almost a year, you have gained a more “objective” perspective on your home culture, and may find yourself looking at it from the outside in, like a fish that has been out of water and can now compare it to the atmosphere or the earth.

Also, your very memory of those places and people may have become somewhat distorted while away, as it gradually adapted itself to what you have needed to feel you left. Memory of course is selective, but it can also be molded by the imagination. This modified memory is the anchor you needed in order to remember where you came from, which in a way makes you who you are. Because your sense of identity is not achieved in a vacuum, but rather constructed from everything and everybody around you.

When you live in a foreign land, far from those familiar people and places, you actually lose much of that old identity, and start building a new one based on your new surroundings. Then when you return, you hope that your family and friends will see and appreciate the “new you”. But when you get there, the old familiar people and things trigger your old identity, and those other things that gave you your new identity are no longer around you. So you feel as though you had left an important part of yourself behind and wonder whether you ever really changed as much as you thought you had.

To make things worse, your family and friends have also been missing the “old you” for many months, and wishing they could see that “you” again. So when you finally return, they don’t see you as you now see yourself, but rather according to how they saw you before, or sometimes even a somewhat distorted version of that memory of you.

All this put together means that sometimes “going back” can be harder than leaving in the first place. In my case, the “culture shock” I felt during my first three months in Ecuador was nothing compared to the culture shock I experienced when I “returned home” five years later. I think this is because when you travel, you EXPECT things to be different and strange, and are mentally prepared for it. But when you “return”, you expect things to be familiar, as you remembered and missed them, and so are entirely unprepared for the reality that awaits you, which catches you off guard.

So my advice to anyone who is contemplating returning home would be this. I think the fewer expectations you have about yourself and others, the easier it will be. The only thing you can be sure of is change, and even that is unpredictable, as it tends to happen when and where it is least expected, and fails to happen when and where it is most expected. I guess what I am trying to say is that returning home will require at least as much of an open mind and effort as adjusting to your Year of Service post did. You will need to explore new ways of relating to your fremly, and they (we) will need to explore new ways of relating to the new you.

Having said all that, let me clarify that this is by no means meant to make you feel nervous or anxious about coming back. My only purpose is to give you the benefit of experience so that your homecoming will be just as wonderful as it should be. We love you very much, have missed you terribly all this time, and are very happy that you are “coming back” soon.

You probably didn’t need me to say any of this anyway, being the friendly, sociable, mature, adaptable, flexible, easy-going, basically happy, positive, level-headed, thoughtful, understanding, loving person you are. Also, I suppose the intensity of the effects I have described increases the longer you stay away, and 10 months are not five years. But at least now I feel better for having done my duty and given you some fatherly advice.

Taking advantage of the time and energy spent in writing this, I am copying this to my blog spot for others to see, also for what it is worth.

Much love and a big hug,
Your Dad, Peter.