[HN Gopher] On Being an Outsider
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On Being an Outsider
Author : related
Score : 58 points
Date : 2021-04-22 17:10 UTC (5 hours ago)
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| BugsBunny1991 wrote:
| My parents were taken in as refugees by the US when they were in
| their early twenties and now, over forty years later, they still
| wonder if it was the right decision to stay here. They've made it
| to the middle-class and that's a pretty amazing thing, but they
| know this isn't their home. To go back, even for a visit, is too
| painful. So much time has past that it's hard to say what there
| is to even return to.
| Diederich wrote:
| > they still wonder if it was the right decision to stay here
|
| May I ask, what are the main reasons why they wonder that?
| Thanks.
| logshipper wrote:
| I moved for university to Toronto, Canada (from India) when I was
| 18. Despite having lived here for (nearly) 4 years, and loving
| absolutely every single minute of it, I don't know if and how I
| will ever be truly claim myself as being "from" Toronto.
|
| Everytime someone here asks me where am I from, I genuinely don't
| know how to answer them.
|
| Do I say I'm from India? Well, I haven't gone back once in these
| 5 years, and I do feel more at home here in Toronto than I would
| in India, so I'm not sure that's fair. So do I then say I'm from
| Toronto? But that feels almost like cheating - I didn't have a
| childhood here, I have no stories to recall from school trips, so
| how can I lay claim to this beautiful city?
|
| I am coming to accept that I truly belong from nowhere. That I
| have transient experiences that stretch from Delhi to Mumbai to
| Chandigarh to Toronto to Ottawa (interned there for a year). The
| inherent complexity of the question "where are you from?" affords
| it no wrong or right answers, and at least theoretically, I
| should not be ashamed to claim the place I resonate with the
| most, or claim no place at all.
|
| PS: Looking at the comments, it does feel nice to know that I am
| not the only one that somehow continues to seek a sense of
| belonging.
| joefourier wrote:
| I think you're overthinking the "where are you from" question.
| While I do agree that moving at 18 isn't as clear-cut as say,
| 30+, in your case most people would safely say you're from
| India, having been born there and lived the majority of your
| years there. However, your home would now be Toronto, and you
| if you have Canadian citizenship no-one should bat any eyebrows
| at you calling yourself Canadian.
| haecceity wrote:
| I don't think OP is overthinking it at all. Home is not just
| a question of place of living but a question of identity and
| belonging. I'm guessing integrating into society in Toronto
| is difficult for OP so there's weak feeling of belonging in
| Toronto.
| logshipper wrote:
| You're right in that home is also a question of identity
| and belonging. It's just that while I would say that I am
| fairly well adjusted to Toronto (heck I started playing
| hockey on a frozen pond this past winter), there's always
| going to be this "vacuum" of sorts (just from the virtue of
| not having had any roots here whatsoever) that keeps me
| from feeling like I can say I am from here. Its a question
| of making peace with it, is all :)
| ShroudedNight wrote:
| As someone who grew up in Toronto, moved to Ottawa for
| University, and returned to the GTA for work, the thing that
| makes Toronto (especially the neighbourhood where I grew up)
| feel like home is a combination of deep familiarity with the
| city, a diverse set of memories of happy times untainted by
| adversary danger that are geographically rooted here, a strong
| sense of familiarity with assistive services, and (at least
| memories of) a strong social network.
|
| In my case, being engaged with church was probably the most
| successful driver of these things. I'm in a very different
| place in terms of metaphysical beliefs now than I was growing
| up, but I can't deny the strong network effects of regularly
| meeting with a group of people that seek ostensibly compatible
| goals of self-improvement through empathy, service, and self-
| congratulation.
| k__ wrote:
| I never felt at home anywhere and I never felt to be part of a
| group.
|
| Somehow people around me always think the opposite. They're
| telling me I'm their best friend or at least that they value my
| attendance.
|
| Overall, I'm okay with this. When I have to move or leave a
| group, I usually don't miss what I've left. I have the impression
| my life gets better when it changes.
|
| But sometimes I think if my life would be better if I was more
| invested in belonging.
| grugagag wrote:
| I've got a similar feeling. I've been friends with many people
| from different from different social categories but I've never
| felt I belonged to any particular group or place. At the time,
| somehow, I feel like a citizen belinging everywhere as I find
| joy in authenticity and have no trouble finding it in the most
| deserted or dilapidated places. Did you also feel like a
| wanderer? I think this is directly related to our personalities
| and no matter what you run into you'll never get the feeling
| you you belong.
| k__ wrote:
| I think, the authenticity thing is true for me.
|
| I rarely do smalltalk, I talk about what interests me,
| usually the people I'm currently talking with.
| f6v wrote:
| I see people get integrated into society through children. You
| live in Berlin, you need to send your children to school, talk to
| the teachers, other parents. You drop your children off to the
| house parties, you talk about your profession in front of your
| child's class. German language becomes a clear necessity.
|
| People also say joining some club helps. I did kickboxing for
| year, there isn't much talking as it turns out... Anyway, I was
| really homesick the whole time, I still am. In Russia, we don't
| celebrate Christmas that much, the New Year is a major holiday.
| That time of the year is the hardest: no familiar festive music,
| the street decorations are off.
|
| I kind of accepted all that, since I decided to pursue
| professional and scientific opportunity instead of comfort. I
| still wonder if I make the right choices from time to time. I
| think it's natural to do that though.
| wassenaar10 wrote:
| Is there no Russian/ex-USSR expat community where you live?
| pelagic_sky wrote:
| I have always loved Japan. I visited once, and made plans to move
| there. I lived in the heart of Tokyo for three years. I made a
| lot of friends, but being a white American, I came to grasps that
| I would always be a Gaijin, and that I would never fit in, no
| mater how well I spoke Japanese or adopted to their customs. I
| left Japan to focus on my future somewhere back in America. 10
| years later I booked a three week trip in Japan. Upon returning,
| it was bitter sweet. Most of the friends I had, had moved on. The
| city was now very touristy. And while I loved the food and
| culture, I knew that I would never live in Japan again. But I
| still love it more than anything.
| cl0ne wrote:
| I have a friend from Japan who has lived in the US for over 25
| years or so. A couple years ago he went back to visit family
| and said that people were treating him very strangely because
| he is Japanese and speaks the language, but he was having to
| ask people how to do everyday things like buy train tickets
| because everything is so different from when he grew up there.
| daenz wrote:
| Do you feel like being considered a gaijin was a form of racism
| towards you?
| emteycz wrote:
| Why do you think skin color is the driving factor? People
| normally consider each other aliens even if they have the
| same skin color.
| daenz wrote:
| I'm asking OP if _they_ do because of this line:
|
| >being a white American, I came to grasps that I would
| always be a Gaijin,
| bluedino wrote:
| Similar story, I had a friend who was born in Korea, came to
| the USA as a child, and was deported back to Korea at age
| forty. He felt like an outsider there, and four years later,
| committed suicide after a bout with depression.
| lambdatemp3 wrote:
| That sounds horrible, normally the courts show leniency in
| these cases as deporting someone that old is basically a
| death sentence.
|
| Was he not able to hire a lawyer?
| bluedino wrote:
| Multiple felonies. His family here hired an immigration
| lawyer to get him back but they couldn't make it happen.
| mayormcmatt wrote:
| This is a virtual mirror of my history with Japan: three years
| (except I was in the rural 'burbs for 2/3 of it), have returned
| to visit friends a couple times, but it's always bittersweet.
| In fact, almost everyone I know who was there for two-plus
| years have told me they experience this.
|
| The one good thing about being an outsider there is people who
| would be guarded towards other Japanese really seem to open up
| if one is warm and receptive. I've had friends confide things
| in my they wouldn't tell their families, and I've had more than
| one sit-down drink with gangsters that saw me, presumably, as a
| novelty. It's like, "he's an outsider who's leaving soon, so
| why not?"
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I kind of have always felt like an outsider in the culture I
| grew up in. So I actually prefer to be in a country where I am
| visibly an outsider because it feels more congruent and weird
| behavior from me is also easier to excuse or accept.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I feel the same as you. I grew up as a kid with parents in
| the Foreign Service, so we country-hopped every year or so
| until I was a teen, when we moved back to the US.
|
| That was (by far) the most difficult move, because there was
| no longer an obvious indicator that I wasn't from wherever
| there was. Acculturation was difficult.
|
| Honestly, I never felt bad about being a foreigner anywhere
| else. Most people didn't care, and of those who did, most
| were honestly curious, and it was a fun way to start a
| conversation and potentially make a new friend. Negative
| attention was present, too, but the friendly outweighed the
| suspicious by a large margin.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Live in this world, but be not of this world.
|
| If you feel like a foreigner in this world, then that is a _good_
| sign. This is not ultimately your true home.
| FredPret wrote:
| You mean it was a mistake for our distant ancestors to grow
| feet and walk the earth and that we should return to the deep
| from whence we came?
| User23 wrote:
| No, parent poster is evidently a dualist and believes our
| true home is spiritual and not material.
| FredPret wrote:
| Yes well I was evidently taking the piss out of him
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. It
| makes discussion considerably less interesting and
| usually nastier as well.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| 1996 wrote:
| Hey dang can I please ask you something? I tried to leave
| a message on another thread but you did not reply.
| User23 wrote:
| Send an email to hn@ycombinator.com.
| collaborative wrote:
| Nice one. Reminds me of "don't forget you were slaves in
| Egypt".
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| I'm glad people are talking about this.
|
| I think capitalism is extremely isolating.
|
| You have to move for your job, so people have to cut all the ties
| that they've made, leave their communities, friends,
| families....all for money.
|
| Sure you can make new ones, but after working and commuting for 8
| to 10 hours a day you get home exhausted and on weekends you have
| to take care of personal errands.
|
| Now multiply this times millions of people, it makes it very hard
| for multiple people to have the time and energy to forge a
| friendship that will take effort and time. Effort and time that
| people don't really have.
|
| There's tons of studies about how isolated people become after
| college.
|
| I don't know what the solution is.
|
| Remote work is going to be awesome and huge to help with this.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I wasn't born in my home country, and hadn't moved there
| permanently until I started primary school.
|
| It's such a weird feeling to be an outsider among people who
| speak your language.
|
| But there are upsides to this - not being too attached to a
| specific place allowed me to take advantage of a few unique
| opportunities.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I think your experience as an outsider is really going to depend
| on how you socialize, how much you do it, with whom, and other
| specific aspects of your situation. Such as which specific
| businesses you frequent.
|
| Some specific people will treat you more warmly than others. Some
| neighborhoods or neighbors will have more culture in common and
| with yours.
|
| That's the experience that I've had living in a few different
| parts of the US and Mexico.
|
| One thing that mitigates all of that a bit is the internet.
| Hacker News, for example, is the same place for everyone, in a
| way.
|
| For me, I have always had poor social skills and little
| integration into communities, so it's not a big difference
| really. Other people who thrive on constant face-to-face social
| interaction may find things like language or cultural barriers to
| be more of an issue. But again, really depends who you are
| talking to. If the locals seem put off by your accent or
| something, the next bar over may be full of Americans if you are
| near a tourist area.
|
| But on a deeper level, there certainly are real social
| consequences of being an outsider, as well as potentially a
| psychological disconnect if things always feel slightly off from
| the world that your brain grew up in.
| deepsun wrote:
| > I think your experience as an outsider is really going to
| depend on how you socialize ...
|
| I'd disagree. Sometimes it's about who you are, not about what
| you do. In some societies you can blend in easily (like San
| Francisco), in some -- there's no chance, no matter what you
| do.
| ilaksh wrote:
| True that some societies are much more open or blending in is
| easier.
|
| Still think most of the other things I said apply if you
| include all of the context rather than just what you quoted.
| cyberlab wrote:
| Somewhat related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome
|
| Although impostor syndrome is usually talked about in the context
| of the workplace, not being a 'foreigner' in another city.
| BugsBunny1991 wrote:
| Doesn't seem related at all.
| initramfs wrote:
| Great article, clarity of writing.
| medicineman wrote:
| If only I felt that way about one thing. Imagine it being your
| entire life, and knowing that every time you do fit in it was
| through conscious effort. Wild.
| drummer wrote:
| Some really nice photos in the article.
| Magi604 wrote:
| Indeed!
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Spectacular use of color, sometimes in bars across the image
| despite the color sources not being the same. Photographers: do
| you see a lot of postprocessing here, or is it largely in
| camera?
| munificent wrote:
| I think there is a decent amount of postprocessing, but I
| don't consider that a slight against the photos. Photography
| is an art that takes place equally behind the camera and in
| the darkroom (or Lightroom as the case may be).
|
| I see:
|
| * Very likely quite a bit of cropping going on. The framing
| on the subway fight is _perfect_ , which I imagine would be
| hard to pull off in the time needed while the fight was
| occurring.
|
| * Also likely some perspective correction in post. The
| horizontal and vertical lines of the office building are damn
| near pixel accurate. Even with a good tilt-shift lens, I'd be
| surprised if that was accomplished entirely in-camera. Most
| lenses have some amount of distortion.
|
| * Color correction is common but hard to strictly
| demonstrate. But, in general, the color in all of these is
| too beautiful to be real to me.
|
| * Some HDR, but well done (which is rare). Look at the shot
| of the party. You can see some texture on the dark building
| facade, even though the illumination of that is likely
| several orders of magnitude darker than the windows. The
| texture looks sort of weird and squishy, which likely means
| that the brightness of the building was raised significantly
| in post, or possibly even a combination of two shots with
| different exposures.
|
| Wonderful work.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| Most of them are in my neighbourhood. One is only a 2 minute
| walk away but I barely recognise it from the stylisation. I'll
| never cease to be amazed at how the camera can create a
| narrative.
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