#1 ·
I was thinking about this today after seeing a documentary about expats who have lived in one country for decades but still feel like "guests." It’s a strange psychological tightrope to walk.
You spend your entire adult life building a life in a place—paying taxes, making friends, contributing to the local culture—and then suddenly, you realize that on paper, you're still technically an outsider. There’s this weird tension between where your heart is and where your legal documents say you're from.
I’ve known people who have moved to a new country for work, stayed for twenty years, and yet the moment they try to fully integrate or claim a part of that identity, they hit a wall of "you'll always be a foreigner." It makes you wonder if identity is something you earn through time and effort, or if it's just something that's assigned to you at birth.
Do you think it's possible to truly feel like you belong to a place if you weren't born there, or is there always going to be that lingering sense of being a visitor?
You spend your entire adult life building a life in a place—paying taxes, making friends, contributing to the local culture—and then suddenly, you realize that on paper, you're still technically an outsider. There’s this weird tension between where your heart is and where your legal documents say you're from.
I’ve known people who have moved to a new country for work, stayed for twenty years, and yet the moment they try to fully integrate or claim a part of that identity, they hit a wall of "you'll always be a foreigner." It makes you wonder if identity is something you earn through time and effort, or if it's just something that's assigned to you at birth.
Do you think it's possible to truly feel like you belong to a place if you weren't born there, or is there always going to be that lingering sense of being a visitor?