The Seventh Year of Transition in Diaspora

There comes another anniversary. And each time/year I look back at it differently. It transcends differently. Today I told a friend I think I made the right decision. There are not too many events in life in which everything shifts in one day. Immigration is one of them. Specially if it happens from East to West.


People look at you and might even think you are born here or raised here with a personal accent, but only you know how you are transiting. Today I can confidently say the transition will never stop once it gets started, will be with you till the very end, the constant process of changing and exploring. In my case the transitions where from East to West, academics to professional and parents’ house to living by oneself all at the same time, in one day. Me being the generation who was born as the revolution was happening and then witnessing an eight-year war, which has no resemblance with what is shown in the media and then going through the aftermaths of war and noncompliant human rights and women’s rights and …. And the immigration which is complicated by itself and makes all of your previous experiences look even more complicated. The first generation transiting usually paves the road for the next generation, whatever remains unpaved has to be taken care of by the next one.


The transition is not a transferable experience, maybe because it’s a very intuitive process in its most parts. It’s a process of constantly questioning everything around you one more time. Without having a given answer, like the ones parents give you when you are very young. You have to find the answers for yourself which is a great growing opportunity. You normally look for a common ground between what you already knew and what you see. There isn’t any most of the time. Sometimes there is. Then you start asking whether this is ”For Me” or “Not for Me” which is again a great self-discovery journey. And teaches you a lot about self responsibility, this time hopefully you can not blame it on any one or system. It’s about you to pick and go. And the best moments are the ones you find an unconventional answer, it’s your discovery moment. It’s great if you could make it a second nature and utilize it for work - ”For This project” or “Not for This Project”
, for life.

Many things you firmly believed in have got to go, without you even being able to believe it, after they create a crisis is when you stop to deny. It’s a constant fall and rise, demolition and reconstruction in a way it has also room to change and/or extend. It’s a challenge of defining boundaries. It’s a challenge of understanding blurry boundaries and being able to work with them. Also of having no boundaries. Defining limits, like a diver determining the dive height. Constantly going back and forth at a certain height, going to the tip of the board, looking down and stepping back until you dive.

Most of the transition process is improvisation. The transition is religious, is personal, is emotional, is professional, is gender specific. It’s about developing a new sense of humor so that people here could laugh at it too, it’s about being able to laugh with them. It’s about being able to have sympathy for matters you were not used to have. That is a significant milestone I guess once you pass it.
It’s about understanding the mindset, without necessarily adapting it in its entire entity.

The transition teaches you something on a daily basis, sometimes hourly, about who you are. And that is why now I think I made the right decision seven years ago to transit.



PS._ This Christmas, I was enjoying my holidays, reading what I like, listening to what I like, sometimes singing along with new year’s songs, word by word, amazed by the fact that seven years ago when I got off the boat, I had no feel for Christmas.