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« Living and working in challenging locations | Main | Happy New Year »
Monday
Feb032014

Expats - don't leave before the end

I was at a rock concert on Saturday. 

That’s not a sentence I write very often!

In reality it was a picnic alongside a rock concert.  

A Day on the Green -four bands playing in a vineyard.  The main act was legendary Australian band Hunters and Collectors.  It was a great concert with the crowd dancing and singing along for many of our old favourites. 

Like all bands they left the stage with the crowd wanting more. So we clapped and shouted “more, more, more”, knowing they would come back, waiting for classics yet to be played.  Some people around us began to pack up, and many, including the people beside us, left the ground. 

“How can they leave?” I wondered, “They haven’t played ‘Throw Your Arms Around Me’ yet.” The band returned to screams and thundering applause and played another bracket that included the song I’d been waiting for.   But the people beside us had missed it.  They’d already gone.

In their rush to avoid the frustrating slow movement of crowds and the lengthy car park crawl to the gate they had missed the best part and my favourite memory of the concert.

It reminded me of expat behavior I’ve observed.  People coming to the end of their assignment who spend the last five or six months emotionally having left.  They resist meeting new people, they withdraw from getting involved in new projects or deepening the friendships they have built.  Instead they move their focus to the next location. 

In some ways it’s a practical response to the challenges of too much to do in too little time.  The challenges of overwhelm that hit at every move point.  In other ways it’s emotional protection.  Knowing it will hurt to say goodbye, I will withdraw from the relationship so the pain of goodbye will be less.  The cost of this strategy is self-evident. 

The risk is in missing the best part.  The favourite memories may be those made in the last days.  The deepest and best relationships are those we feel the most pain in saying goodbye. 

The challenge is to learn to navigate both the overwhelm and the emotional pain, both inextricably linked at the beginning and end of expat assignments.

Have you seen this behavior or felt the desire to do the same yourself?  Please comment below.  And if you are feeling overwhelmed or in emotional pain please feel free to email me to chat.

PS The song I was waiting for is a love song, that speaks about the pain of farewells; “if you disappear out of view, you know I will never say goodbye…”

 

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