Freedom Is Not Where You Are, It’s Who You Are: 7 Lessons I’ve Learned From Living Abroad
Relocating and moving to the other end of the globe is often one of the most exciting things that shakes up our lives, calibrates us, and reveals parts of ourselves we never knew existed. Here’s seven valuable lessons I’ve learned upon leaving my Singaporean home at the age of 20, finding myself in a foreign land without friends and family.
1. It opens up the craziest situations that allow you to be tested for your kindness.
Living abroad provides us with great opportunities to receive kindness, and also extend that kindness to someone else. I have been put in the craziest situations where I desperately needed help, and help was rendered to me. My lovely housemate, who is always so quick to offer me a lift to the University when I was rushing for time and always happy to cook for me during my busy periods. My selfless friends, who, when I fell down and injured my knees badly, took me to their hostel and got someone to give me first aid. It can surprise us to see how people can really go above and beyond just to help a friend in need.
Not only friends but strangers, too. Several men on the Tube have offered to heave my luggage up the stairs for me, not once but thrice at three different stations. Another morning in Australia, a woman whom I was never acquainted with got down from her car just to help me up when I sprained my ankle badly. I held her arm for support, then she drove me home and saw me to my doorstep despite being already late for work.
These acts of kindness have always set the tone of our day—a day filled with positivity and gratitude and made us believe there is some good in this world. Most of the time, we are very sheltered in our home country, living with limited opportunities to render help to others or to receive it in return. Well, if this is what kindness feels like, I really love experiencing this beautiful side of humanity.
When I thought this couldn’t possibly get any better, I was wrong. Offering help selflessly was not second nature to me, so I was surprised when I decided to offer my only dry towel to my shivering friend when we came out of the water after snorkeling. Or when I gave my login details and password to my housemate who was locked out of the school computer system and needed to submit her assignment urgently. These two experiences have taught me that we often overlook the impact of a small act of kindness, but it is powerful.
2. Being independent is good, but don’t fall into the trap of self-sufficiency.
While the stress of relocating and moving away from family might be daunting for many, it wasn’t for me. Having successfully cleaned, cooked, bought groceries, done the laundry, all while juggling University, an internship and other commitments, I prided myself in my newfound independence and self-sufficiency. It is of no surprise to know that many of us think of self-sufficiency as a positive trait—that we can do things on our own, and that we do not need to rely on others.
Society rarely brands self-sufficiency as a negative trait, but I beg to differ. Could it be just a nicer word for pride? We pride ourselves in OUR strengths, OUR abilities, OUR confidence to do things on our own; it’s too easy to fall into pride. We assume control and when we do, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we don’t need help. Ironically, being overseas is exactly the time where we need to rely on God’s strength and comfort more than ever. It is certainly good to have skills like cooking, buying groceries, cleaning, paying the bills; skills like these to demonstrate our adulthood and our independence. However, we cannot be self-sufficient or prideful. We need to acknowledge that we are still human beings, and we need help sometimes.
3. Old friends do matter, make the effort to stay in touch.
Let’s admit it, the prospect of moving abroad is exciting. We’re excited to make new friends, get to know some locals, and start a social life. It’s easy to get swept up in coffee dates, attending festivals and parties with our newfound friends. We find ourselves carried away in a new environment, being with new people, and experiencing new things…so much so that we might unintentionally neglect our friends back home.
It’s true that friends are our family when we are living abroad. It is only natural that we rely more on our new friends since we don’t have family here. Because of that, friendships forged overseas can build really fast, and I got pretty close to my new friends in such a short period of time. I was confident that these friends, who have extended kindness to me in a foreign land will be friends that stick with me for a lifetime.
But in the end, I found that it is always the ones back home that have stuck through thick and thin with me. They are the ones we can always fall back on and will be the ones supporting us through life. Of course, that is not to rule out the possibility of making lifelong friends while living abroad. There are definitely some selected few that definitely have our back, but we should always prioritize and put in the effort to stay close to our friends back home.
4. If your absence never mattered, your presence won’t either.
Going away also revealed to me who my true friends were back in Singapore. When I broke the news that I was moving abroad to my friends, one of them did not even flinch. No sign of happiness (“I’m so happy for you!”), sadness (“Please don’t go, I’m going to miss you so much!”) or even annoying teasing (“Oh great, finally life without Grace will be so peaceful”). Just…indifference.
True friends will find the time and make the effort to stay in touch with you: Pick up a video call, wish you a Happy Birthday, or even write you letters. Long distance relationships and friendships are indeed hard work, which is why I am honored to receive gifts for my 21st birthday: my friends had wrapped up a huge parcel and sent it, along with handwritten birthday cards all the way from Singapore. People who came to see me before my departure bore farewell gifts and well wishes. On the other hand, there are also people who—despite my multiple efforts to contact them—never initiated a chat, never replied to my messages and went into MIA mode immediately after I left. You’ll be surprised that some of these are people whom you thought were your very best friends. They might not have intentionally ignored us, but well, we get a sense of where we stand on their priority list only after we’ve left.
5. Human desires can never be easily satisfied.
Since I was young, my ultimate goal was to study overseas, and my desire was so strong to the point that my motivation for working hard in high school and tertiary education was to ensure I could get into an overseas university. I worked hard, saved for college fees, prayed, and did everything I could to increase my chances for a life abroad. When I finally attained it, my heart beamed with joy, and I was pretty convinced that I shall not want anything else. This was the one thing I set my eyes on for years, and I was immensely grateful.
However, six months later, some of my initial excitement began to wear off, and my contentment began to fade away. Even though I did not complain about my life overseas (you should never complain about anything you worked hard for), I found myself wanting more: I want a permanent residency, not a temporary visa; I want a car here; I want an apartment I could call my own here; and after I complete my Bachelor’s Degree, I would want a Masters…
…and so on.
After some self-reflection, I noticed a pattern similar to the lives of so many others. We spent most of our lives chasing after that one goal, thinking that when we attain it, we would finally be happy. However, my experience has proven that even with everything good that has happened in my life, I would still be unfulfilled. We, as imperfect human beings, will always be left wanting more. Perhaps it is part of our sinful nature, that we are greedy, and we are always coveting things; and once we’ve got them, we would become complacent and chase after new temptations. The key is to be content and happy right now where we are and always be grateful for how far we have come.
6. Freedom is not where you are, it’s who you are.
Contrary to the cliché idea of ‘getting lost to find yourself,’ living abroad has shown me that freedom is not a place, but a state of mind. So many broken people are trotting across the globe, backpacking, dying to get out to find some answers to their problems. Pop culture and fictional narratives paint an illusion, suggesting that the answer to ultimate freedom is your own version of ‘Eat Pray Love’. This idea is further fueled by the countless travel quotes like ‘escape the mundane’ and ‘live your fantasy’…which makes it impossible not to be sold by the idea. The people who are left behind, then, are supposed to be miserable.
Everything feels fresh when we first set foot in a new country destined to be our new home for the next few years. Personally, I’ve met so many freshmen students on campus who quickly became my friends and never failed to express their delight in finally escaping from their parents’ controlling behavior. The joy of leaving home is real and relatable. No more curfews, no more nagging, lots of personal space, and most of all, say bye to micromanaging parents. We had true freedom. Or did we?
Months and days passed. The new becomes familiar. The once exciting becomes routine. Perhaps living alone gives us a lot of personal space, but true freedom is never about constantly being on the road and going anywhere you please. In other words, I don’t even think it’s a ‘place’ thing. We seek temporary comfort in the thrill of new places, and once it dies down, we find that the emotional scar is still there. It will never be a solution to your problems. If you are trying to pack your life in a piece of luggage and going away to ‘find yourself,’ I suggest you don’t. Thing is, we have to learn to be free before learning to fly. If we are not even free at home, what makes us think we will be free after flying off in a plane?
Freedom is sometimes going home. It is possible to feel free at home and trapped living overseas. All of us have the right and the ability to roam free with or without getting on a plane and don’t let anyone else tell us otherwise.
7. And lastly, it makes you more aware of the passage of time.
People who live abroad tend to experience adulting to a greater extent. Sometimes, we even mature emotionally before we are of age, making us more self-conscious of the changes happening within us and counting the days that have passed since we first arrived in a foreign land. Moving from a tropical country to a country that experiences the four seasons made me even more aware of the passage of time. I contemplated the fleetingness of life as the leaves in my backyard turned yellow and brown and then fall to the ground.
The process of adulting requires us to struggle in darkness for a little while in order to grow up. In her book Passion and Purity, Elisabeth Elliot brings up the metaphor of a dying acorn. When the acorn is dying, it doesn’t know that it is going to become a beautiful oak tree. “It only knows it is dying. It can only see the darkness, the disintegrating, right here, right now.”
Similarly, there will always be that uncertainty, especially when unforeseen circumstances are so common—we never quite expect what life throws at us when we are abroad. We never knew how it feels to be utterly hopeless, to be homesick, to be on our own. It also strengthens our trust and faith, in life and in God.