Culture Shock

I find it a very odd to call it "culture shock." That name has some inaccurate connotations. It implies spontaneity. It implies jarring and jolting. It implies that walking downtown and to find live squid on sale profoundly bothers you on the level of a severed arm.

"Shock" implies the suddenness of revelation. This is completely wrong. The effects of the so-called culture shock are infinitely more nuanced and subtle then you're led to believe. I think cultural lingering is a better term for it. It wasn't the new culture that shocked me it was the absence of the old one. It's a sly, tricky master. Found not in the glaring differences but the uncomfortable similarities. It comes wrapped in many garbs and prefers nostalgia and daydreams. Dancing quietly in the background of your daily moods and life. It's the sub-par taste of the coffee and the faint yet distinct taste of sugar in overpriced spaghetti.

So simple and subtle, phrases like "back home we have real meat" or "in America we have Camel Filters" can run wild and construct narratives that seem perfectly plausible and even valid. "Teaching is OK, but delivering pizzas is what I really want to do." Rationalizations and justifications abound. Family and friends who were always there before suddenly won't be. Better jobs that you couldn't get before are magically within your reach now. All the magnificent plans and machinations for one or two years in the future become much more pressing and urgent. Then you look at the calender and see that there's seven months to go. And hope it won't be like this the whole time.

Then there's the slight swelling of anger at the local population. A population that never bothered you before. The strange love for high heels with nine different zippers on them. Blame them for their man purses and guy liner and freakishly tight pants. And find it a moral failing.

That's the real cultural shock, the ghost in the machine. Knocking around daily and keeping you off track. It does have its limits. And it is possible to overcome. But the requirements of time seem like little compensation in the face of the gaping maw opening up before you.

"What have I done?"