It’s easier to be with people who are like you – people who speak your language, eat what you eat, and share the same cultural lens. Not only can being around different people be uncomfortable, it is often downright exhausting.
Translating cultural differences and trying to be yourself while also attempting not to offend isn’t what anyone would describe as pleasant. Wanting to “flow” but fearing that you’re too loud or animated for the other’s comfort zone. Or feeling ashamed about the little voice in your head that is super annoyed at someone else’s manifestation of social norms simply because they’re different than yours.
And yes, I’ll go ahead and say what many won’t. It’s easier to be with people who look like you. There’s no need to explain any features that are uniquely yours (kinky hair, an inability to keep your shoulder from bouncing when your ear hears a deep bass beat, etc). No one is wondering why you have this or that. Why you’re left when they’re right. There’s full acceptance of all that you were genetically endowed with and a diminished fear of upholding or clamoring towards a set beauty standard in which people who look like you had no say.
On the flip side, painfully unpeeling the onion of years of your own assumptions of beauty as you sit among those who aren’t checking any of your boxes is so hard.
I want a break.
I want a break from being around people who are so different because it’s hard for me. I want to just relax with my own tribe, sing our own songs, eat our own food, do our own thing.
But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. – 1 Samuel 16:7
But above all else, I want to do right. I want to see people the way He does. I want to love indiscriminately just like Him.
So I’m choosing to be uncomfortable.
I think you nailed the exact right term to describe extended time with a language and cultural barrier . . . exhausting. Even if you want to do it. Even if you think it’s fun. Even if you get a lot out of it. Even if people are friendly and welcoming. Still, there’s a level of mental exhaustion that comes along with expanding our horizons! Nevertheless, that’s how new joys are born. So, there it is. Plus, just like the expanded appreciation described in your hubby post, your experience of home will now be enhanced as well. Amen to all that!
Absolutely! “There’s no place like home” has never come alive for me the way it is now.
“Not only can being around different people be uncomfortable, it is often downright exhausting.”
One of the gifts of Hubby’s job (moving every 2-3 years), is that we get to be in new countries and cultures, but when things get exhausting, we can retreat into our own four walls of our family and home with the things that feel culturally familiar.
I’ve never lived overseas for more than 3 months at a time, so it’s surely nothing compared to multiple years in different places, but oh man. Sometimes my family just needs to curl up with some pizza (if we can find it) and binge on Netflix so our minds can veg out and rest.