Day 369: Third Culture Bolshevik

“In every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race. Those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness so that we mostly conform, we hide our secret identities beneath false skins of those identities which bear the belongers’ seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds—because we are alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves—we soar, we fly, we flee.”


-Salman Rushdie


After reading John H Quinley's post of Salman Rushdie's quote, I felt a need to confess about a few things.


Rootlessness - what is it? How is it so that one can define such terms without understanding its meaning? Why does society deem us as outcasts, just as any other foreigner, alien, outsider?


Sometimes at night, when I'm alone in the dark, comfortable solitude before going to sleep, a veil of uncertainty envelops me. It's not necessarily a sensation of ... pain one would feel, but rather one that strangles the rootless mentally and emotionally. Sometimes, you just discard them as you would with any problem when your life is on a high. Sometimes, you have no choice but to struggle with it; sometimes so long that it will keep you awake throughout the night... for hours.


But even night after night after night, how is it that we fail to find a solution to this problem in our lives? Isn't it supposed to be one of those problems where you have to think about it for a while, make a mental adjustment to your thought process, and get over it - just like that?


It's almost as if I've been running around in circles where you'd think you're getting somewhere. As a third culture kid in college, you're even more distinct from the "international" crowd in the school population - you're an international third culture kid. The first few months of your college career would go fine, because you're all so excited to be in a new country, new town, new school, in a new community. But then when reality hits you and when your heart starts to asks you strange questions, like- why is it so difficult adjusting? I thought I'm liking this place pretty fine? Why is it so hard to make meaningful connections with the people around me, even though these guys and girls are really friendly? Is it something that I'm doing wrong?


You swat those thoughts away, because they can only make you depressed and more self-conscious. But as time rolls on and you find yourself less happy and spending a lot of time THINKING, you can't help but start to take these questions more seriously and notice that you're a broken water jar (for a lack of better analogies). And the only sensible, sane thing to do is to fill up that jar that's draining all your emotional energy. So, what do you do - you do all sorts of things to make yourself feel content, happy, pleased. And that can be anything you can think of: overworking yourself in academics and getting a grade that makes you happy. Meeting new people in hopes that you'd find a best friend - that would make you happy. Smoking weed and doing shat with your friends so your problems won't haunt you for that night. Getting smashed at a party or social gathering so you would feel less worried. Finding a hookup buddy, working out in the gym, writing your feelings down on paper, obsessing yourself with video games... whatever. Whatever you can find. But I don't think it takes too long before you come to realize that there's not much you can do about it. Like I said, it's almost as if you're running in circles, only coming to know you really haven't gotten anywhere. You thought you were going somewhere, but you really haven't.


But even after thinking and writing and shedding tears and trying to find an answer for years and years, I still don't know anything! It's so stupid and fruitless, this whole thing. I don't know anything but one thing: that I am rootless. Like, yeah, I learned some things on the way, and I've built character from these social barriers that I had to face, and I've changed the way I would talk to people, but that's basically identifying the bolshevik problems that you were born into this world with - hooray.


I don't know. After a while, you become somewhat numb to this stuff, but I think you can still confess to yourself that you still have those times where this rootlessness issue keeps you awake at night and it makes you feel so, so, so homesick sometimes and so starved for that special something that you become emaciated. Not literally.


Again, I don't know. People react to such situations differently, but I'm sure a bunch of you out there can relate to this. Keep up the good work, and don't be afraid to be who you are. Most people we meet don't really give a dog's poo anyways. Let's just be the best rootless people.