People who know me know that I identify as one of those “TCKs”. The relatively new-fangled notion of a ‘Third Culture Kid’ elaborates someone who grew up in a culture dissimilar to that of their parents, thus belonging to neither their parents’ culture, nor the one they grew up in. This is even more applicable to kids who’ve grown up in multiple cultures, rather than just one, and doubly so over even that to kids who have moved around their entire lives.
I’ve made posts about things unique to this experience. I feel most at home not in a certain city, but when I’m at the Airport, for example, waiting for a flight. It’s hard to explain. I somehow feel like these travelers are easier to relate to than people in the city I’m leaving, or going towards. Something about being in transition: it’s a comfortable place to be, for me.
I wonder why that is. Is it that being in transition allows entertaining the idea of a fresh start? The opportunity to reinvent yourself in your new destination, or even be whoever you want to be (perhaps even yourself) during the short time you’re not bound to any place or group of people? Something about airports… there’s a quote I remember.
“The truth is that airports have seen more sincere kisses than wedding halls…”
I think I’m inclined to agree. Something about airports, that feeling of a new horizon, that anticipation of change, brings out the genuine-ness in people more easily than most other circumstances do. This is the same reason travelers anywhere open up so easily, I’d wager. The same reason I found and made such good friends over my summer in Geneva. What about transitions makes us feel fearless enough to be genuine though? Is it even about being fearless? Is it the feeling of having nothing to lose? Is it the excitement of new relationships, the anticipation of the absence of an old one? Perhaps it’s the latter.
Moving around all my life has been both an amazing experience and an uprooting one. I’m grateful to have friends all over the world, not only to call upon if I’m ever in their country, but also friends who are close enough to stay in touch over the multiple means of communication we have these days. I have friends I’m still in touch with from every part of my life. Suyash, from third grade in Canton, Ohio. Aniruddha and Meghna from 7th and 8th grade in Pune, India. My friends from high school in Chennai, my friends from college in Philadelphia, my friends from the WHO/UN, in Geneva. I’m extremely lucky to be able to have these relationships with these people who want to maintain the connection we have.
But I look at people around me here, in Dayton, and even at home, in Chennai, sometimes, and I envy them.
Their entire lives have been in this city. They have the elementary school friend they’ve grown up with, the house they’ve notched their growing heights in, the old car that their father first bought, the old street they played football in. Their stories, so to speak, are here. Most everything, when written about, can be drawn from this city, the people here, the buildings here, the animals here, the weather here, to show how this person developed into the person they are. They have their friends who’ve been with them since they were kids, seen them grow into the people they are now, the mistakes they made, the poor choices, the brave decisions. They have roots in their story. Their chapters are filled with recurring characters and developing motifs.
I envy that. To have other people be a part of the chapters in my life, and to be a part of their’s.
The biggest drawback of being a TCK, is the feeling of being just a chapter in the lives of the people you’ve met, while they maintain a novel or two’s worth of importance and influence in your own story. The people I’ve met, wherever I go, will always be a part of who I am. How I’ve grown, influenced by them in the different cities I’ve met them, will always be reflected wherever else I travel to. But in the context of the recurring characters of their story… it’s hard to be alright with having to be a guest appearance. An NPC even, haha.
Maybe that’s why people are so genuine, in transition. The idea of a chapter coming to an end, even if another is just a page turn away, isn’t something we’re always ready for, let alone comfortable with. And if turning the page means saying goodbye to a character we’ve grown attached to, even if temporarily, it’s understandable that we want to say everything we can, do everything we feel, live the entire relationship out while we still have that page unturned, before we’re forced to deal with the thought of regretting not doing so.
Perhaps this logic can be applied to chapters yet to close too. After all, why wait for the end of one to decide that all the relationship development needs to be rushed? I know I’ve made the mistake of giving in to that feeling of only being a chapter in other peoples’ stories. Perhaps I’ve been thinking of it wrong.
Perhaps it’s time to stop worrying about not being more than a chapter in someone else’s life, and worry more about treating people in your life like you’re seeing them in an airport, before a flight. Unafraid of being genuine. Invested in developing as much of that relationship as you can, while you have them. And committing to remember them and keep them in your life, even after their flight leaves.
And then, maybe those chapters won’t seem so definite in their endings after all.
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