When I arrived in Germany, life was still going on, and I mean “the same”! I remember once my sister told me that life moments are the same everywhere. I never believed it until I came to Germany. Every thing was different —literally every F* thing— but the life moments were exactly the same. I mean the “now” moment you experience. You lie down on the bed in Germany and feel exactly the same things you were feeling when you lied down on your bed in Iran. You get hungry and go to the kitchen and open the fridge, exactly the same way you were doing this in Iran. You walk in the streets, look at the shops and people, and feel completely the same experience you had in Iran.
Because you have not migrated from “yourself”. It is still “you” and your feelings and thoughts. The environment has changed, yes; people have changed; language is different; the whole city structure is different; you are much more free now; but you and your inner feelings and your mind and thoughts are totally the same.
Lots of people migrate and think that changing their outer world will drastically change their inner one. No, no, no. Big mistake. Even if at the beginning you feel a huge inner change, after a while it will be gone. It is again “you” versus the world.
Why am I talking about this fact?
I am in a social group of Persians who have migrated to Germany. It is like a virtual community to share knowledge and experience, ask questions, and get help. I have noticed that once in a while, these topics are raised in the group, which indicates an obvious hesitation:
“What do you think of Germany?”
“Why is Germany like this and not like that?”
“Are you Ok with Germans being like this? Why are taxes so high? Why there is no night-life?”
“Has someone migrated to Canada from Germany? Can they share their experiences?”
It is sad.
I hardly ever hear that people from other countries think of migrating and moving to another whole country this easily. This is not the first option for them to solve their issues. But for us, the Iranians, it is a very common way out. When we move once, we can move again and again. Because, honestly, we have encountered lots of extreme difficulties and we are thick-skinned. After the first move, if everything is not as we had imagined, we think to ourselves, “This was not a good destination for you. There are other places in the world where you may belong. Just keep moving…”. And this is not good. Maybe in a normal process, you can look at this as a positive adventurous approach. But I believe this is a tragedy for us. You can already see the lack of “feeling of belonging” in us.
Even I get these thoughts when I am frustrated. Sometimes I think that if I were in Canada, or at least in an English-speaking country or a land with more welcoming people, I would have made close friends over the last 15 months. I am very close to my colleagues, though. But after some incidents, I realized the hard way that colleagues can not be close friends. They always prioritize their benefits in the end.
I used to think that I am that kind of girl who, if she goes to Europe, no matter which country, is able to make new friends quickly. I already had an European mindset. And it was true, as when I started my job five days after my plane landed in Germany, I was acting soooo normal as if I had been living here my whole life. My colleagues were so surprised and mentioned this maybe 20 times. To be honest, I had this feeling that they were expecting a shy Middle Eastern girl with low confidence who is silent most of the time, and now I was joking and marching around. Maybe it was also annoying for them. But this was comming one hundred percent naturally. I was not “trying”. I was also shocked that I was coping so well! I was suddenly alone on a whole new continent for the first time in my life, and I could not feel it! Or at least express it in my daily life!
Anyhow, here I am; no connection yet, blaming my choice of migration destination sometimes. But I have to remind myself that the story is always the same: You versus the world. Life is the same everywhere, when “You”, as a whole, are the same. Maybe via moving, you force yourself to face new people and opportunities, and that seems positive. But we should not make a habit out of it. Maybe this is why I cannot make peace with traveling! This is another story that I will tell someday 😐