And yet, sometimes, I stop myself and think. What kind of heart is being produced by these new changes? And must I always be a None of the Above? When the stewardess comes down the aisle with disembarkation forms, what do I fill in? My passport says one thing, may face another; my accent contradicts my eyes. Place of Residence, Final Destination, even Marital Status are not much easier to fill in; usually I just tick ‘Other’.
And beneath all the boxes, where do we place ourselves? How does one fix a moving object on a map? I am not an exile, really, not an immigrant; not deracinated, I think, any more than I am rooted. I have not fled the oppression of war, nor found ostracism in the places where I do alight; I scarcely feel severed from a home I have scarcely known. Yet is ‘citizen of the world’ enough to comfort me? And does taking my home as every place make it easier to sleep at night?
-Pico Iyer, Nowhere Man
http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Ba20Spo-t1-body-d30.html
We had to read this essay in my English class and I laughed aloud when I discovered how it just described me. If you are a third culture kid, a long-term Ywamer, any missionary kid, you will empathize.
I do not know what it’s like to be exclusively from one place. Kona, Hawaii, is home, yes- but never fully. I have vestiges of New Zealand pulsing through my veins, along with a handful of other countries like Australia and Cambodia. It is a part of life for me to have long-distance relationships. I belong everywhere, my heart is everywhere. . . but in that I never fully belong. I will never be a stranger to a place but I will always be out-of-place in some way or another. Even here, my home- I say some words funny and talk about my friends in Vietnam, Costa Rica, or Australia.
We’re all spread out for a reason, because the most important man in the universe had some important last words. . . GO INTO ALL THE WORLD.
He’s the reason we’re going everywhere, and it makes it easier to know that we don’t belong here. I belong in heaven, with Jesus Christ. The only place I feel at home.
