Expat Friends, We're on the Same Team

I had just come out of a long stretch of time in our remote mountain home during the summer when most of our expat friends went home for a few months or were traveling to other places for meetings and vacation. My husband and I had been tucked away, quietly digging into language study that was kicking our tails. Finally, the escape we had been waiting for arrived- a trip to the beach in a neighboring country. I couldn’t wait to get out.

We were at the pool in a beautiful resort for a gathering of other non-profit workers.It was meant to be a time of refreshment and encouragement, where we could exhale and connect and relax.It should have been a time to be with people who “get it”, who live a similar life and identify with what we go through and experience.Instead, I found myself listening in on a conversation between some other workers from a different part of Asia arguing about which pizza delivery service in their country was the best.

And at that moment I had never felt more misunderstood.

At that time there were no pizza delivery services in the whole country where we lived, much less in our town, way out in the mountains, seven hours away from the nearest city.If we want pizza we make it ourselves, from scratch, and we use precious pepperonis that come in a care package all the way from America until they sadly run out.This simple, silly predicament of pizza brought to light something that had been silently creeping into my heart, stealing the joy out of my expat experience:

Comparison.

I think when I embarked on this journey of living abroad, I knew that my family and friends back home wouldn’t be able to fully understand where we would live or what life would be like. But I never expected that other people living abroad could live such vastly different experiences than me and that I would find myself feeling jealous, misunderstood and desperately unseen.  When scrolling Instagram, I'd see friends in other countries and cities, sipping on flavored lattes and visiting shopping malls and buying avocados. All of a sudden, it made me feel entitled to feel sorry for myself—because no one knows what my life is like and where I live and what I go through and I JUST WANT STARBUCKS AND PIZZA HUT FOR GOODNESS SAKES.

I developed this false sense of “no one understands” and “no one else lives like me” that robbed me of finding the blessings of life in my corner of the world. What I didn’t realize was that my friend who has a Starbucks in her city also lives with the daily struggle of polluted air, dirty water, and insane traffic that makes commuting a nightmare. My friend with a Chili’s in her city only gets to have their chips and salsa every couple of months because it’s so expensive to eat there and her actual daily grocery list looks much like mine. My friend who gets to primarily speak English and doesn’t have to rely on a second language in her city also faces the challenges of a much more difficult culture for women and can’t freely go out and do things the same way that I can here. My friend that lives by a beautiful beach in the Pacific also deals with crazy, natural disasters and has to rely on a rescue by boat or plane if there is a real emergency.

It’s easy to look at our expat friends and the highlights of where they live and feel like they must have it easier or better than we do.But the reality is, that mentality steals our joy of living rooted in our places and puts a wedge between relationships that are holy and needed and good.Comparison is a thief and it steals the fullness of life from us if we let it.That is what happened that day at the pool.I let comparison and jealousy and self-pity creep in. What should have been a week of fun and friendship turned into a week of feeling unseen and misunderstood.

Does my life look like my other expat friends around the globe?
Of course not. Our challenges here are unique to this place and culture and people and location, even specific to our own family DNA.

When we start trying to measure who has it easier or harder we miss the incredible gift that this community can be to us if we let it. There’s no room for comparison in this life abroad.In our host country, we have this saying- “same-same but different.” No matter how different our experiences are, we can find similarities in this crazy life that tie us together and give us a place of commonality and camaraderie that enriches our lives beyond measure.

I’m thankful I can say I’ve come a long way from that day at the beachside pool.
If you have a pizza delivery service where you are, I hope you order some tonight and eat every last cheesy slice. Get extra pepperoni if you can.
If you frequent Starbucks, please order a venti flat white and think of me.
If you get the benefit of real grocery stores, paved roads, fresh avocado, Western restaurants or other conveniences I only dream of—I can wholeheartedly say today that I am both happy for you and I affirm that those things don’t make your life abroad easier or better or richer than mine.

And for my off-the-grid sisters— if you’re deep in the jungle, high on a mountain or way out in the ocean where you feel, quite literally, like you are at the ends of the earth and no one else gets it—sister, I see you. Your places and spaces are special and beautiful and unique and I’m cheering you on as you embrace the adventure. Wherever you find yourself, I have learned I can celebrate you and the uniqueness of your life without diminishing or devaluing my own.And I can see that no matter how different our experiences are, we definitely have this in common:

We need each other.