Culture shock, or: there are an awful lot of ways to lose track of the person you think you are
This morning a friend of mine – one of the only people I actually talk to here lately – who is about ten years older than me, told me that he found out last night one of his closest friends had died – a friend from that critical phase when you transition into adulthood. I recognized his thousand yard stare. It’s that dazed look you get when you’re trying to look out but you can only look in. It’s also quite similar to the one travelers get and I don’t think this is a coincidence.
When I found out my friend Matt had died, I fell to the floor and I didn’t get up again for months. I lay on the living room floor of the first apartment I shared in L.A. and stared at the ceiling for an entire summer. (Then I went to Alaska and spent a month making a really big hook-rug, but that’s another story.) I used a breakup that happened at the same time to explain my behavior to my roommate and friends. I could not find words to speak about the death.
There is a handful of people in the world who were intimately involved in the process of me becoming the person I am today. Maybe four, and that’s being liberal. But Matt was the one at my side when I came to the core beliefs that have guided me through my adult life. He is deeply woven into the fabric of my personality. When he died, I literally couldn’t understand how I didn’t die too. If you knock the foundation out from under a house, how does it remain standing?
In a far more pervasive sense, culture is the foundation on which we build everything we are. We can’t see that it as separate from ourselves, because in a very real way, it’s not. It is how we learn to function in the world, how we understand the world, and it is also the world.
I think that how quickly – if at all – a traveler gets that thousand yard stare has a lot to do with how quickly – if at all – it occurs to that person that everything they unconsciously hold as the basis of their Self is gone. When you really look at it, culture shock follows similar paths as grief. Anger (“oh why can’t these bloody incompetent people keep a bus on schedule?!”), denial (“this can’t really be fried snake on a stick, it definitely must be chicken”), depression (if you’ve never broken down in a foreign country, immobilized and overwhelmed by the sheer foreignness of everything, you probably either haven’t been on the road very long or you’ve been in Europe), etc.
I don’t know why some people are severely affected and others almost not at all. Maybe some people’s brains more efficiently bridge the discrepancy between what they expect to happen and what is actually happening. Maybe some people can keep up their own cultural filter more easily. And maybe in some way I don’t quite understand, it’s related to how, when a loved one dies, some people will cry and feel sad while still getting on with their lives, and others will lay on the floor for two months. You know, for instance.
Tags: Nong Khai, Thailand
sandra_101
Dear Sandy, nrnrI just wanted to say how much I appreciate your beautiful writing, I discovered your blog when I was bored at work browsing travel websites and have been reading for about a month. nrnrBest, nrKelly
hey kid
you out there?
either shedding baggage or monkey kidnap..
prolly monkey kidnap.
enjoy the bananas
Kelly – thank you for your comment! It’s nice to know I’m doing my tiny bit for bored office workers everywhere.
And Jacques – totally monkey kidnap.