Or unhappy.
There’s lot’s of valid reasons to move abroad, and it’s an educational experience – but i would advise against moving abroad because you’re vaguely dissatisfied and think somehow it will be better out there.
Been there, done that. This is what i learned.
FACT: people are the same everywhere. The cultural undercurrents are different, but you get the same shares of nice people and narrow-minded stupid people. If anything, less prosperous or war-scarred countries might make it more difficult to find out who are the nice ones.
FACT: to put it bluntly: you stay yourself. The ability to be happy depends largely the ability to make the best of what you’ve got, to see the positive side of things, and to be able to spend a time doing things you like. That works wherever you are.
The psychological luggage that makes your life what it is just now will be with you when you get off the plane. If you want to be happy anywhere, you need to work on that as well, not just move and think you will be a new you.
FACT: change of scenery also means change of habits, assumptions. You’ll need to get into the local culture and history to really start to get half of the casual conversations. Think of film references, jokes based on advertisements from 20 years ago, religions and childhood figures. Open-mindedness: position of females, outlook on homosexuality, other aspects vary widely.
It might be even more of a shock in the US or Australia, where people look like us, talk a familiar language, but definitely have a different culture. Not to underestimate.
Most conversations will start with ‘where are you from?’, which can get annoying after a while. Also, while being a foreigner makes you attractively exotic, it also makes you a bit of an outsider. A lot of expats end up ghettoing away with their own countrymen, just because the effort it takes to get past those barriers.
FACT: it takes time to build a new support cast. You will miss what’s going on in the lives of your current friends and family. A loving group of people you understand is also an important component of being happy, for most people. That will only come clear to you after a few months, when the excitement wears off, in what’s known to most expats as the first bout of homesickness.
So anyway, it’s not that easy. It’s better to start for the right reasons (job opportunities, nature, weather), and with reasonable expectations. Then the experience will be worth it.
