Background to the texts “Advice about staying or coming back,” “Slave to the word” and “About friends and other personal reasons”: A good friend of mine who was also living in Kaohsiung at the time mentioned via email during her vacation in Cape Town that she felt like staying in South Africa. I suspected that this was only emotion speaking, but I nevertheless took the opportunity to say certain things.
——————–
TUESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 2004
My friend
[…]
You know my feelings on the subject of going home. I believe, and have believed it ever since my second year in this country, that the lifestyle we lead here makes it easy for us to deceive ourselves. We buy coffee mugs and lounge sets, and teaspoons and motorcycles; we paint our walls in strange colours, and we start relationships with people who can’t even find Stellenbosch or Pretoria on a map.
We do all these things in part because it’s natural, and partly to compensate ourselves for what we don’t have here: a community of loved ones. Some of us do find love here, and in such cases, things work out. But many of us know that the people who have always mattered most to us are far away. Too far.
Time goes on. We constantly formulate new plans, and we talk about buying a house, and about better socio-economic situations when we finally get so far to shift our teaspoons and paintbrushes to the Republic of Our Birth. Meanwhile, our lives go on, and we get older. On the other side of the planet our loved ones’ lives also continue, and they also get older. We become aware of this every time we go home for a few weeks, to among other reasons blow our hard-earned cash, in ways that would tell everyone who wanted to know that we are doing well in the foreign land.
Is it bad to go abroad? No. Sometimes we need to get away from people and environments that are important to us. Some of us do it because we have “issues”. Others do it because they are bored. There are also those who don’t do it because they necessarily want to but because the socio-economic prospects in their own country are such that they simply have to consider alternatives. Some of us do it for all these reasons, and a few others.
Each of us must, after the lapse of a few months or a few years, decide where our priorities lie. We have to decide whether this temporary arrangement will become permanent, and whether we’re willing to pay the price for it. Or we get to the point where we realise that, despite our personal issues, despite our view of a so-called conventional life, and despite the harsh social reality that will welcome us together with the customs officer back into our own country, we have no choice but to return because we are no longer willing to pay the price for the benefits of a life in whatever other country we have spent a few years.
You must decide where you stand with this issue. Maybe you choose to send an empty seat on that plane back to Taiwan. Maybe you decide to come back, but only for a few months. Or maybe you come back to fulfil your initial plan of another two years. Everything, as you well know, has a price.
As your friend, I repeat my earlier comments: I will miss your company, but if you decide not to come back, I will wish you luck.
[…]
______________________