Why moving overseas will not create a magical new you

For those who feel lost, bereft, or disconnected from meaning, living abroad can promise deliverance. But it can just as likely present new struggles.

If one travels enough, challenges themselves enough, or sails into enough storms, does each bump and bruise reflect a life well-lived? Source: Getty Images

Have you ever dreamed of living abroad?

You’re not alone. In 2016, 92,000 Australians packed up to settle abroad.

And if you’re a childless adult aged between 25 and 34, you’re in luck. They’re most likely to take advantage of their status for emigratory freedom.

Gems like: ‘If an opportunity opens up, seize it’, ‘Living abroad builds character’, or ‘Life begins where comfort ends’ gives living abroad the mystique of a dramatic haircut. New country, new you.

It even has its own name – “pulling a geographic”.

But what does all this movement mean for our communities?

Aisyah Shah Idil. Source: Supplied

Distance takes a toll on a relationship. If self-disclosure becomes the main form of connection, a relationship can be restricted to emotional reliance.

Even worse if through a staticky Skype connection.

The interdependence of enmeshed lives – touch, laughter, silence, errands – is missing.

According to sociologist Susan Pinker, this face-to-face social integration is the strongest predictor of how long you’ll live.

Your interactions with people during your day – neighbours, cashiers, colleagues, book clubs – enable the release of oxytocin that acts as a  vaccine against stress and disease.

Disrupting these bonds in search of a hazy promise of overseas fulfilment may be too high a cost.

One of Seneca’s Moral Letters to Lucilius, ‘On Travel as a Cure for Discontent’ says:

“You are not journeying; you are drifting and being driven, only exchanging one place for another, although that which you seek, – to live well, – is found everywhere... Live in this belief: ‘I am not born for any one corner of the universe; this whole world is my country.’”

For those who feel lost, bereft, or disconnected from meaning, living abroad can promise deliverance.

But it can just as likely present new struggles.

Twenty years ago, my Singaporean-born mother made Sydney her home.

Now, she travels all around the world to visit our scattered pockets of family. Though she would never hold me back from making a similar change, I can see the sacrifices she makes to prioritise them.

So, is it true: if one travels enough, challenges themselves enough, or sails into enough storms, does each bump and bruise reflect a life well-lived?

Maybe. Maybe not. 

Perhaps there’s no need to go through life hunting and starved.

The winding path to meaning is still right where we left it. The weight of ourselves is still ours to carry.

Aisyah Shah Idil is a 22-year-old Sydney-based writer. She is the author of the experimental poetry book The Naming (Subbed In, 2017). This piece was originally featured on the The Ethics Centre site.