The Culture Shock

When I lived in Korea, as the initial numbness wore away, but it was replaced with something else. A deep and restless depression. Simply ignoring all the little problems that would normal irk me, they began to collect in my self-conscious like a massive rubbish heap of anxiety. Eventually this pile became too big to ignore, and I felt ill at ease shifting through the masses of social ineptitude, and cultural misunderstandings.

Knowing what was coming, I was better prepared for it this time. It’s surprising how small accomplishments feel like giant triumphs when you’re feeling your way out of the fog. The first time taking the Subway. Finding a gocerery store, and buying a familiar food. Walking your way to work without getting lost. Ordering local food on your own. Finding an apartment. Each little personal triumph widens your safety net, as your local knowledge starts to spider web before you. And the safer you start to feel, the more that is truly familiar (a home slept in, a food eaten, a street navigated) the more willing you are to take small but necessary risks to open yourself to your new country. Learning new words, trying new foods, feeling less fearful when you make small, but unavoidable cultural faux pas.

Once the basics of food, shelter, and comfort are taken care of- once you feel like you can take care of yourself, each risk taken, and triumph made lifts the fog further, until you feel ready to look around with virgin eyes at your alien planet.
I’ve heard that human experience is like hanging coats on a coat hanger. The coat represents a single unique moment of experience. The coat hanger is prior experience that allows you to understand new experiences in context, to organize them neatly in your mind.

When you have no coat hanger- no prior, similar experience to which you can relate what is happening around you, the coats simply fall and collect in a heap on the floor. Much more difficult to sort though.

Eventually you do sort through it. It just takes a heck of a lot longer. Maybe you get a set of drawers? Mind drawers- I like the sound of that..

That analogy sounded much better the first time I heard it…