Belonging, But Not

When Things Fell Apart - Sept 2013

I remember the moment and the feeling distinctly: It was August 2012 and I was walking along the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California. Fresh off my first year as a Country Coordinator, I was en route to Toronto in order to present a paper at an academic gathering of the International Association for Mission Studies and had decided to stop off and spend a few days with my brother. As for the feeling? As I wrote then, it was the first time in a long time that I felt fully relaxed, unguarded, at ease, and . . . free. At the time I chalked it up to culture shocking and another peak on the 'Cultural Adaptation Curve.' With the benefit of distance and an altered position, I suspect something else may have been going on as well.

For the better part of four years in Southeast Asia I lived as a 'Tourist' - at least according to the series of stamps in my passport. I was a Program Coordinator for a Service-Learning Program whose home office was in Chicago but whose work involved regular travel and a presence throughout Southeast Asia. North Borneo, with its beautiful scenery, friendly people, delicious food, and low-cost air connections made sense as a place to seek a second home. Being a perpetual tourist was never really the intent. From the beginning there had been plans in place to secure a longer term stay. An application had been prepared and submitted but stalled out -repeatedly- in the internal bureaucracies and procedures of governmental review boards and institutional structures abroad and at home. Despite the good intentions and hard work of many individuals, myself included, things never quite seemed to work out and I found myself living in what I've come to describe as a state of indefinite impermanence.

Day to day this meant dozens of subtle adjustments to my actions and words. Individually, these adjustments were minor but, when taken as a whole, they reinforced a vibe of existential dissonance.

It meant thinking in 90-day increments. It meant telling shop keepers and baristas who saw me regularly that I did not, in fact, live or work there . . . that I was visiting for a long time. It meant not having a local bank account or my name on the title of the car that I drove. It meant not buying furniture or painting walls and only acquiring goods that were easy to pack or ship in case I would need to move on quickly. It meant steeling myself at every border crossing, having honest but careful answers at hand. It meant living with a gnawing awareness that, as happened at the end of September, the life I had been constructing could fall apart with the single stroke of an agent's pen.

While legal and legit, it meant living with ever-present reminders of my own uncertain situation.

When things did fall apart a Malaysian friend messaged me and said, ". . . I think one cannot live in a non-resident status for too long." It was a simple, true statement. I read into it questions of belonging and it helped me to name this dissonance that I had been living. On the one hand, in all the ways that matter the most to me -friendship, family, feeling and affinity- I absolutely did, and still do, 'belong'. On the other hand, in the very real ways of nation states and immigration policies  (constructs that we as a worldwide human race use to mark territories, control resources, and divide 'us' from 'them') I most certainly did not and do not. . .

Belonging, but not - a bifurcated life.

It'll take a while to sort this one out.

In some ways I'm brought back to my research with migrant workers from Nepal and their questions of identity, belonging, and agency that go hand in hand with living a life stretched across international borders. In other ways, I am also brought back to a passage from Isaiah that was on a name plaque in my childhood bedroom: "The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever." 

I'm reminded that life itself is both indefinite and impermanent, an uncertain gift to be enjoyed and to make the most of while we have it - wherever and however we may be.