Hacker News Reader

Comment by saraton1n | Hacker News Reader

I was a military child, and so I moved around my whole life. My best friend has lived their whole life in the city I live in now.

Sometimes I get a little jealous because I don't have any heart-connection to any place. Most of the friends I regularly talk to are people I've met within the last 5 years, and I still don't have any still-standing friendships from the time before my dad retired.

But also, I cannot imagine that life, nor do I know if I really want to. Moving around so much gave me such a wide array of interests and cultural knowledge about places in and outside of the US. I think the benefits of that well-rounded background outweigh whatever pangs of sadness I get occasionally about not really feeling like I have a homeland.

View on HN

I also grew up as a military kid and continued to jump from place to place in adulthood.

A few years ago I started thinking of myself as a "third culture" person. Characteristics like having an expanded worldview and ability to quickly read new cultures are some of the upsides. Unfortunately, I also find myself very misunderstood and I have a lot of trouble with relationships of all kinds. It's heartbreaking to leave people behind, and it's exhausting to spend the years fitting in with new groups of people. Most cultures are protective and cautious of outsiders, and friendships rarely stick. The Curse of the Traveler means that my favorite people and things are never where I am right now, but I'm none the poorer for having known them.

As I've grown older, I've come to appreciate the benefits more and more. I have favorite places to shop, eat, entertain myself all over the world. I'm confident that I see and use much more of cities than most people. Where you live, work, socialize, entertain yourself, seek education, and so on can all be totally different places. My worldview cherry-picks from anything anywhere. I browse the internet of many countries, and read news from all over.

I'm always thinking "wherever you go, there you are" with people around me. My mom visited me while I was living in Tokyo, and she just wanted to go to Disneyland and see fireworks, and mostly wanted to eat American food she found familiar. She found the unfamiliar things intriguing, but didn't know how to ask good questions and put the unfamiliar things to use in her life. People are largely blind to details of new people and places and it takes some real effort to penetrate layers of language and social access.

I wish individuals would reflect on their cultures more. Americans should be outraged over their broken healthcare system and work cultures (even though the pay can be good). Some places might benefit from forgetting a lot of their religious and political history in exchange for some happiness and freedom. Many cultures have surprisingly high tolerances for pollution, poverty, and civil rights restrictions.

I split my childhood between three places, and my adult life between four, many in different countries. The wife and I are planning to move again next year.

It's sometimes hard when you see others with their consistent lives, and roots laid down, but at the same time they'll often say how they envy you.

It's similar to the choice of having or not having kids. The trade off in life experiences is neither better or worse, just different.

>It's similar to the choice of having or not having kids. The trade off in life experiences is neither better or worse, just different.

i'm not so sure about that

Luckily this depends on the individual

had that too, the place my dad retired to became my "hometown"

having said that, as i got older and started having kids, i did move back to that hometown. i honestly did enjoy moving every 1-3 years as a kid, but my wife had a similar experience and did not enjoy it. now my kids have a home town and can see both sets of their grandparents every week or so. its also pretty cool taking my kids to the same restaurants and places that i went to when i was younger. based on how much trouble my 5 year old had with this move its not something i want to subject them to any more times(shes happy about it now and we wanted to get it over with before kindergarden etc starts). people like us who had a positive outcome from moving constantly are the outliers i think, its better to give the kids a sense of continuity.

Yea, my brother has wholly set his roots down there, and so I know my family will be settling here somewhat permanently, which is odd to me because I know this isn't the place for me. But, my brother has a kid and I'm much less likely to, so it makes sense my parents want to remain close.

I think I'd want to raise the kid with a sense of continuity, but also travel a lot. maybe even move to another country for a bit before returning back to the place i'd picked to raise them. who knows?

What are the concrete benefits of such a well-rounded background?

Not the person you asked, but it's harder to have harmful conceits about people and places when you've been to or met people from them. I've noticed that as the internet has grown, the rhetoric has moved from "lol, Americans" to "why do you vote for these people" to a lot more empathy for how our system is designed to inhibit change (good and bad).

I've changed my understanding of other countries the same way. Mostly from meeting people online, but sometimes in person. Just something as simple as someone asking "what is ketchup?" in line at an elevator at a convention can expand the mind. How do you describe ketchup? Everyone knows ketchup! It made me wonder what else was normal and obvious to me that isn't to someone who's never experienced it.

Not OP, but as someone who also moves around a lot, I'd say a few. Mainly, you don't get too entrenched in the local culture. You learn to kind of just be able to blend in with anyone. I could talk to some blue hair about radical ideas today, talk TCP pros and cons with some reserved networking guru tomorrow, and talk pro wrestling with a 50 year old redneck trucker the next day. Not that I'm super knowledgeable in all of those subjects, but would be just as comfortable doing all three. It's not as simple as having some extroverted ability or anything - anyone could do that, you just learn enough about people of different backgrounds and regions to understand how to interact that you really only get through exposure.

You also don't hold awful stereotypes that most people have - even most of those in a place like here. The south isn't all racist, the coast isn't all snobby, the southwest isn't full of dangerous cartels murdering everyone, middle America isn't a bunch of uneducated hicks, etc.

i mean, aside from those already listed? every 3 years i had to rebuild my life from scratch. when hard times come, do u want the person who's only ever experienced one way of life? or would you rather be with the person who has continuously had new challenges thrown at them, who has consistently been forced to learn a new way of life?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com