http://www.worldweave.com/BSidentity.html
The above link is to a page describing what a global nomad is and some of the problems they experience.
This page describes me! Especially as to how I describe my citizenship (dual UK/US).
I’m wondering are there any other people who don’t have an easy, pat answer to “where do you come from?” And do you ever struggle with feelings of not fitting in in any country?
Sorry…I got that discombobulated and saw “Noble Gonads”…And here, we see the noble Gonad in its natural habitiat…
I know…stupid…
In regards to that site, after skimming, I can understand a bit of cultural uncertainty arising from that lifestyle. But I don’t see any reason to whine about it; most people in this situation are so because they are in the jet-set. Reg’lar folk don’t have the $ to globe-hop. If you want to have a cultural identity, settle down somewhere…
Don’t mean to sound harsh, but that essay(?), with all the headers being some high-falutin’ form of “marginality” that rings whiney.
snort…
I love your description of my “jet-setting lifestyle”. The most jet-set we got is when my dad purchased a second-hand caravan, fixed it up and took us to Wales or Cornwall for our summer holidays.
Right.:o On review, I neglected to mention other situations, like people who simply move to another country at some point in their lives. Not jet-setting, that. But still, the linked author sounds like his/her parent(s) were in the diplomatic corps or worked mulinational assignments of some sort. That’s where I got the jet-setting impression.
Me too! :eek:
Same here, kinda like when you shockingly doubletake the “Bundt Cake” label at the grocery store.
I’ve heard, read rather, this experienced desribed as “life on the hyphen” by Gustavo Perez-Firmat, a Cuban-American professor at Duke. The hyphen he refers to is the one between Cuban and American, and is pretty much how I would describe my own cultural identity, since I grew up in Cuba, but I’m growing old in the US, after spending some in between years in Europe.
I’m neither completely Cuban, and a conversation with my cousins in Cuba is proof, if I needed any, of that. Nor am I completely American, although I am comfortable around Americans I always think of them as, well, “them”. It’s not as bad as it sounds, I think my perspective on both US and Cuban culture is richer for it, and it has certainly allowed me experiences that are unattainable to others with a single cultural background, but it is different.
For me, it’s the shiitake mushrooms. Shitcake 'shrooms?!
Hmm…would that be a calm posting?
Thanks for the link, ouisey!
Yes, I sometimes feel that way too.
I don´t feel completely Austrian, but I feel really weird when people im Austria consider me a Finn just because I´m half Finnish and spent part of my childhood there. I´m neither, and I´m both. I´m just me.
But I don´t feel like I don´t belong, like I don´t have a place I can call home. It´s rather that I have too many.
Studying abroad, I´ve managed to add two more to that list of “homes”. And as an interpreter, I´ll probably end up in a few more countries before I find a place to settle down. Wherever I am, there´s always a place I miss and feel homesick for. But I´m still not unhappy where I live, I fit in, and I´m comfortable with it. But sometimes I do wish I had one single place I could call home.
I´m no rich jet-setter, these things just happened. And I´m glad they did. It makes it hard to define my cultural identity, but it enriches my life in so many ways and I wouldn´t want to miss it.