People keep telling me I'm brave for coming here, a single woman all by myself in a big city in a VERY foreign country. Especially my Taiwanese friends. Chiawei keeps telling me she could never do what I'm doing, and Ned calls me at least once a day to make sure that I'm ok...
The thing of it is, I kind of wish they would stop saying it, because until people started calling me brave it never really occurred to me that there was anything to be afraid of in the first place. I mean sure there are emotional difficulties involved with being away from home for so long, but those are just annoying, not frightening. Really, living in a foreign country isn't that bad. Of course you find things that you dislike, but you just remind yourself that there are thousands of other people who have been living like that their whole lives and there's no reason that you can't do it too. Then you suck it up and move on. And there's always the benefit of making new friends and learning new things to make it worth the effort...
Still, it makes me wonder if I shouldn't at least be a little frightened, if there's something in my brain that kind of blocks the usually inherent need to be surrounded by the familiar, and whether I wouldn't be better off if that blockage could somehow be surgically removed. Is it possible that there could come a time when I'm incapable of forming an attachment to anything at all? Is my sense of adventure just damning me to a life of nomadic uncertainty?
Do I think too much?
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1 comment:
Yes, it's very brave, but also the sign of a very lively and curious mind. Independence is part of our culture, partly because there is still a lot of space -- space between homes, space on the roads -- although that is coming under pressures of a growing population. Perhaps when we cannot go anywhere without being surrounded by elbows and knees and backpacks not our own, we, too, shall find our independent ways changing.
The definition of bravery might change. I hope not, though.
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