A First Letter

Dear Friends,

It has been three years since I returned to America. My passport tells me I am American. I look American. I talk American, most of the time. Most people see just that: American. And I am. I am so proud of the great things my country has done and am grateful to be the result of the great American experience. Yet, while I own an American passport, and belong to that country, I do not own its culture. American culture, or really any other culture, does not stand up to the task of representing my identity.

There are really two types of culture: surface and deep. Surface culture includes things like food, language, customs, traditions, and often appearance. But deep culture, deep culture is an entirely different beast altogether. Deep culture includes the beliefs, the values, the thought processes and assumptions that that particular people hold.

Surface culture is easy. While language is hard to learn, it’s a clear difference that is usually easily reconciled with a grin and some hand motions. And customs whether it is a wai or the hand shake, are generally easy to comply with once seen, understood or taught. The stuff of deep culture, the beliefs and thought processes, however, are never easy, and provide a sticky problem to the Third Culture Kid.

Seeing as this is the first post, an explanation is in order. A Third Culture Kid, TCK, is anyone who has lived an extended time outside of their parents culture during their developmental years. The life of a TCK is characterized by high mobility and a liminal relationship with culture.

To clarity, a TCK may move around every year, every two years, every four years, or twice in their childhood, but even if they move only twice, they are often constantly surrounded with others who are moving to and from constantly. Even if the TCK does not actually move houses, or leave “home,” they may travel so much, for such extended periods of time that home is a feeling and not a place.

As to their liminal relationship with culture, TCKs do not have the advantage of being on the outside looking in. We live in a void, touching all cultures and not belonging to any. Check out the story of Mr. Roundhead at tckworld.com for an excellent illustration of this point. Living at what is in essence the crossroads of culture is a wonderful and terrible thing. There are many blessings from it, but it is really the challenges that define us, that define me.

The struggle to keep up, to know that something is funny, but never know why, the struggle to relate. This struggle is known through out the world, it is a common problem. TCKs are different though. We are often without control, losing friends, homes, everything we know in the matter of one short plane ride. It’s not that we are odd, off, or out of it. We aren’t nerds, geeks or weirdos. We are different. We do not share the same assumptions you do. We do not think like you.

There have been many times when I have found that I have no idea what my friends, who normally I understand well, are talking about. It is at those times of inner, profound embarrassment, that I feel utterly and totally alone. Don’t feel too sorry for me. It is the way life is, a reality.

Who you should feel sorry for is all the TCKs who aren’t able to express this feeling of utter loneliness. Those poor missionary kids whose parents send them off to Sunday school while on furlow, expecting them to fit in and be fine. Those military brats who walk into their new school and just say to themselves, “It’s only till next assignment.” Feel sorry for them, because they need our help.

So, despite what my passport says, despite my being American, I do not belong in America. I do not belong anywhere; at the same time I belong everywhere. This then is the struggle of every TCK. To live, knowing one can never go home. To look, and know one will never truly belong. And to be okay with it. That is our struggle every day.