Transnationals: Inside Outsiders

Musings on international childhood reality

“Made me feel a true sense of connection with someone who actually understands where I am ‘from’ ”, is one example of the feedback I got when my sister shared my post ‘Where Are You From?’. Also: “Love this!!! is there a link?”; “She writes so well. I am hoping she will write something longer.” Well, with my thanks for your encouraging words, this article is for ye.

In my post ‘Where Are You From?’, I looked at some typical reactions of fixed-culture people when I tell them I was brought up transnationally, and the mistrust Transnationals have to endure because we are of no fixed origin. You can find it here:

In 2010 there was a book published called Third Culture Kids, which I got quite excited about, until I opened it. It did not speak to me at all. I wanted meaty stuff, the insights, the stories, the psychology, the commonalities of people who have been brought up in many different countries as children; the pitfalls and benefits, and a look at how parents, and children could do things differently. That book had none of that.

As a child and as an adult, I called myself a Bendjesserit, which is a word my teen-age sister invented for children brought up like us in more than 3 countries. Friends were as delighted as I was to have a word for me. OK, I had to explain the strange word, but I had to explain where I was ‘from’ lengthily anyway. Even though Bendjesserit is made up, having a word made a big difference in that it legitimised my Self, my truth, my experience as something Other. It gave people a box to put me in, and let’s face it, people need to put you into an origins box. Nowadays, instead of Bendjesserit, I use the term Transnational, because it is more self-explanatory and accessible. Well, I hope it is — I wrote to a famous thriller writer once, whose main character seems to be a Transnational, and in my letter I asked if the writer himself was one. One of his secretaries wrote back : “Certainly not, transnationals are terrorists.” (!)

I have some theories about Transnationals, and one is that children brought up with so much cultural and situational change either become strong, motivated and creative adults, or they cannot handle it at all, and are a bit of a confused unhappy mess, unable or unwilling to make life decisions, with tragically low self-confidence and motivation.

Another theory is that the Transnationals brought up since the 2000’s with the world-spanning internet and social media are a different breed altogether from those of us who either kept up with changes-of-address and diligently wrote letters to our left-behind friends, or else lost those friends forever, purely by default.

I was terrible at writing letters as a child, and if I did write a thank you letter, it often sat around for days getting stale, so I might add a bit more to it, and eventually post a tome, or, more often, it lay around unsent forever, and my grandparents thought I was an ungrateful little brat. It just never occurred to me to get my friends’ addresses before we left a country, and that I could stay in touch with them. Children in my day did not write to each other, but nowadays, they text each other even if they are sitting on the same sofa! Their texts are one liners. No need to keep a letter until it has enough of interest in it before sending it! I wonder if it would have made a difference if either parent had advised me to get my friends’ addresses?

I went to 17 schools by the time I was 17, so the very concept of friends is completely different for one such as I, compared to a settled and fixed-culture child. As a young adult, I just wasn’t in the habit of keeping friends. I might have close friendships, and then they would pass. That seemed normal. I was passive. I didn’t work to keep a friendship. My sexual relationships also didn’t last long, until I was 26. People come, people go was my life experience.

The way I used to make friends at International schools was simply to be near a girl or a group that I liked, and just hang around them. Simple as. But at fixed-culture schools, where the kids had been classmates for years and years, I was The New Girl, and I was either ignored, or became a sort of prize to have as a friend. God only knows what kind of power-plays had been going on that I disrupted. I wasn’t aware at the time, but at fixed-culture schools I was merely a foil, a minor new detail in a very old painting, painted by those children themselves.

I generally like everyone when I first meet them, — that is my default mode — but again, it is passive. As a young adult, I didn’t have the confidence that I was equally likeable myself, and depended on the other person to decide that we were friends. I sound superficial, but I don’t think that is fair to say. I listen well, and I am quite deep really. I have far too complicated a personal history to be anything but honest. Perhaps I am too honest? I take people at face value, as I expect to be taken. Lately, I suspect that is naïve.

It took me many decades to understand that most people habitually have a public face or persona, one that is often quite different from their real self. I suspect this is a trait of fixed-culture people, and that my transparency is a Transnational trait and somehow disarms them…but what do you think?

Until I was 44 and suddenly became disabled, I worked hard, had many great colleagues, and was always well-liked at my jobs. Ever since I could no longer work, my social life and friends dwindled down to bare bones, but the thing I miss most is having colleagues. Did my Transnational childhood make me a better colleague than a friend?

As soon as I could, I left home and all I wanted to do was settle down and literally grow roots by keeping a garden. I was in the U.S. and found the establishment culture scary for its ‘ quick fix’ and sheep mentality. Its huge size, and its habituation with Orwellian double speak made it seem impossible to effect any real change. I went on holiday with four friends, to London, and ended up staying eleven years.

In London, I didn’t feel particularly foreign, maybe because it is full of foreigners, or because I lived there as a child. However, I inevitably just did not get many of the British cultural references and humour, and very few of my friends or acquaintances were white British people. This was a land where the state would pay you a living wage even if you were unemployed, and everyone had free healthcare, and education. Many British people had absolutely no idea of the poverty and lack of infrastructure most of the world lived in. That ignorance was not bliss, for it seems to be human nature to focus on what you don’t have, rather than count your blessings. I never warmed to the British sense of entitlement, entrenched as it is along with the last grasps and gasps of a dying empire.

I also lacked the making of, and reading of, the micro-expressions that are part and parcel of a national identity. Sometimes I seem to have that ability, sometimes not. Micro-expressions interest me a lot, now, as I think they might be why I can often spot another Transnational from ten feet away, before they even open their mouth. I used to think I just pick up on an indefinable air around them. Maybe it is both air and micro expressions. Here is a true story: I fulfilled a promise or premonition I made to myself at age 7, and emigrated permanently to Ireland at age 31; five years later I was completely lost, on holiday in London, trying to visit a friend in hospital. There was a thick fog, and the busses weren’t running. I had to ask for directions seven or eight times, and every single person I stopped to ask for help was Irish! Did I know, somehow, subconsciously that they were Irish? How? From a thick and rushing crowd, I tuned in exclusively to the Irish. Is this the same radar that helps me spot another Transnational?

I think Transnationals have a different relationship with Change than settled people. I should read Future Shock again, (1970, Alvin Toffler and his spouse, Adelaide Farrell), but have instead opted to google it. Future shock syndrome is: ‘Too much change in too short a period of time’ or ‘ The physical and psychological distress suffered by one who is unable to cope with the rapidity of social and technological changes.’ The four stages of shock syndrome include the initial stage, the compensatory stage, the progressive stage and the refractory stage (refractory means resistant). Have Transnationals been in future shock since childhood? Or is everyone else in a permanent state of future shock, and we have been inured to it as part of growing up?

“Lucinda, why do you always have to do things differently?” my neighbour said to me, in a fond but exasperated tone of voice. I was making a low wall with glass bottles, in a time before glass recycling. “Do I?” I wondered. People do things differently from culture to culture, but within one culture there is a perceived ‘way to do things.’ Transnationals, as adults, can pick and choose what makes sense, and reject traditional habits or attitudes more easily — not only can we, but we have had to.

How different this is to an academic anthropologist’s approach, where the attitudes of a foreign culture must be accepted and uninfluenced by the outsider. Is it cultural imperialism I practice? Or a female common sense? I was very young when I realised that women were treated unfairly the world over, and that men ruled the world, and ruled it badly. I believe I gained an innate sense of Universal female and male natures. I spent my life challenging patriarchal tactics and ways of being. Above any other benefits, I credit my transnational childhood for giving me a wider perspective, the indignant confidence, and the tools to do so.