Tag: restraint

The Secret to Expat Sadness

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Conversation by Elena Gatti

I came home and gave in. Not to smoking or chocolate. Something darker that had been tramped down for weeks and weeks, tossed into the corner, until the weight of it had me on my knees.

Sadness.

We don’t talk about sadness in the utopia that is expat life where challenging jobs and magazine worthy vacations in lands far, far away, bounce us from one week to the next.

The buzz of our electronic devices keeping us in touch with friends and family back home – and reminding us how successful everyone else is – amounts to a constant wave-like roar in our ears, drowning out the aches and pains pinging in the background.

Yet the sadness can catch up with you and wash over you with the intensity of a riptide. I had a squall of epic proportions. There was nothing I could do, other than ride it out.

“I let it win,” I told a friend during a long overdue catch up. “For 45 minutes, I let it go. I didn’t think it would end.”

“Forty five minutes is a long time,” she said pausing.

Sheets to my nose, favorite songs on the radio: this squall of sadness was the kindness I showed to myself as the storm of emotions raged.

Then I did something else counter intuitive. I wrote to four friends. They were scattered around the world; one a few miles away, the other thousands, the last two ten thousand. I tapped out a message as tears trickled down my nose.

Even though life is very full and has meaning – I feel sad. And if I said these words to anyone, face to face, they wouldn’t understand why, by looking at my outer life.

“See look at Facebook or Instagram or you yesterday! Everything is amazing.”

Nor do I think I could I explain it in a way that wouldn’t end in “it will all work out” or “don’t worry.” Wanted to share so that it isn’t a secret any more. Also, in case you ever feel like this and need someone to talk to. We will find our way together.

Not everyone responded, they’re busy with their own struggles.

Three responses came back right away.

…i think that is profound that you can experience that and share it.

Yes, yes I do have periods like that and you are right, it’s hard to explain and for others to understand. …

And me too.  Of course, me too.  

They affirmed I was not alone. And in doing so, joined me, halving my pain by letting me honest.

When our children cry, as they do, I huddle them close. I try to remember to reach past the cotton candy evanescence of “it’s okay” for something they can hold on to.

“I”m here,” I say.

Reading Chris Malcomb’s “Learning to Breathe”, an essay about how being an asthmatic was his first introduction into meditation, had me wondering how I could help the kids, even now, begun to wrestle with the beast of disappointment.

I’m teaching our 5 year old to reach for the ridge in his mouth, the one behind his teeth, below the soft tissue of his palate. First he puts his finger on mine (I know, but there are plenty of germs in there his germs can join). Then he goes to find his with the tip of his tongue.

This is the first step of the 4-7-8 breathing method, a technique that can get you to sleep in 60 seconds.

I use it now to ground myself any time I need: stuck in traffic, in the midst of a difficult conversation, search for patience with aforementioned 5 and 2 year old.

“I’m here,” I say to myself. Sadness and all.

How do you get through life’s squalls? Who could you send a note today to encourage and receive a boost in your sails?

 

My Ratio is Off. Is Yours?

Photo by Meanest Indian

My ratio is off. And I’m not talking about the 34-26-34 measurements that rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot  made so famous (though I could very well be but that’s another blog post for another time) . I’m talking about my positivity ratio.

Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, a woman who has spent twenty years researching the effect of thinking positively. She says that a 3:1 ratio is what we all should strive for in order to tap into our creative, resilient selves. Fredrickson isn’t talking about adding an orphan Annie -the-sun-will-come-out-tomorrow varnish to our day to day. She means that our emotions are powerful barometers in how we think about ourselves and others. “People who are languishing in life can move to flourishing,” she says, if we would tip our emotions over from negative to positive.

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We Don't Have to do it Your Way

http://www.flickr.com/photos/xpace/
Ramadan Glow 3 by Benjamin Sperandio

I was having lunch with a friend the other day and as our nearly one year old boys toddled around her house, we got to chewing the salads and also the fat of life as close friends (and it must be said, women) do. Everything from business ideas to family drama was on the table alongside the fried chicken and coleslaw. Then we got to what everyone’s talking about in the Muslim world these days: Ramadan.

I mentioned the person in the UAE who was recently fined for insulting the season on Facebook.

“Why are people so surprised things close in a Muslim country?” my friend asked.

We went a couple of rounds on this one, but more on this in a bit.

The seasons of fasting is around the corner of the weekend. In order to be home — and avoid breaking fast at 10pm when the sun goes down in Europe some say — Qatari families are coming home earlier from their sun soaked days in Nice, Barcelona, or the far ends of the earth. Because the start of school and universities are delayed until after Eid al Fitr, expats are heading to the airport (or indeed airport hopping) during what they consider a “dead” month.

This split on Ramadan is emblematic of the many cities that inhabit this capital we all share — at times like this– uncomfortably.

Let’s look at some of the reasons we differ on Ramadan.

A Plural Islamic Society

The losing of restaurants, shortened working hours, and synchronized schedule that affects the malls, government, and other key services is new to most expats who are generally from environments where religion is not only practiced in private but mostly on the weekends. To bring religion into everyday life can not only be new, it seems at odds with the “your life can go on exactly as it did before — see the McDonald’s?” strategy that many organizations use when recruiting new people to Qatar. This is blatant (well meaning) false advertising.

Strangely the Victoria Secret, Volvo, or Versace may have a calming effect on the person worried about settling in away from home. But access to the familiar whether in Mumbai, Miami, or Madrid doesn’t guarantee that life in a new  city or country is going to be blip free. At the most basic, the locations of your favorite anything will be in new places, therefore not the same.

Ramadan moves back ten days each year and as long it’s near the start of the school year, it will be a dizzying first encounter for many new arrivals. Not eating in public, avoiding drinking in your car; these are confusing signals juxtaposed with wanting to host the World Cup or the Tour de France. The constant juggle between modernity and tradition, between culturally appropriate and individual freedom is something everyone in Qatar is experiencing and there are no easy answers.

For the now, luxury brands and not eating in the workplace are not mutually exclusive.

A Believer’s Community

When you move to a country for a job, what you end up doing is working. Even those Muslims who are not from the Gulf or here without their families find Ramadan a lonely time because it is a season where the community supports itself in gathering closer to God. The gatherings within people’s homes, akin to looking in while people are circled around an Easter brunch, are closed off to those who don’t know anyone, don’t have invitations, or in general, are lonely. This is the opposite of the season, as many groups have iftars, or group dinners, sponsored for charity as much as entertainment, to gather together.

You can still fall through the cracks, however, and this means rather than drawing closer to God through those around you, you feel more alone than ever. This is no different than any other holiday season: Christmas or Diwali, when the overall effect is isolation rather than inclusion, it may feel more compounded because public life is truncated during the day and most people who are fasting will generally not be as available as they might otherwise be.

But back to the main subject during my lunch, which circulated around a central question: Why do visitors, guests, non-citizens feel so comfortable about criticizing their host country? Whether Ramadan, or Qatari National Day (which infamously sparked a firestorm online), my friend was curious exactly why people felt and expressed themselves vociferously.

“Would you hear an Arab talking about the 4th of July?” she asked me. “No, we’d say, okay, this is their country, let them do it their way.”

She had a point, and a crystallizing one — even if someone thought Christmas was excessive, Diwali pagan, and the Solstice unnecessary, these views would eventually disappear into white noise in most contexts because they do not have the entrenched charge that cultural critique takes on in Qatar.

A Minefield

There’s the us/against them factor, which we’ve discussed in the past; but also, if you are new and you are experiencing Ramadan for the first time, your grumble is the first to you and perhaps natural, no harm intended, more processing. But you’ll forget or be completely unaware that it’s the tenth or twentieth for the person, often Qatari, sometimes Arab or Muslim from somewhere else, to hear this by now, unoriginal reaction.

Child rearing, fashion, movies, culture — they are all blank canvases for us to express our opinions. If you live in Doha, however, the stakes seem very high and generally come down along racial or religious lines. When we are talking about Ramadan, or traffic, or friendships, we aren’t merely talking about the issue at hand but the psychic force of all the other ones as well come to bear. It’s like being in a distinguishing relationship, where arguments escalate, and you both care, or remember caring, or want to care — and you need a new way out of an old, destructive pattern.

This Ramadan, why not reach out to someone and do the thing the season was designed to do: spend thoughtful, intentional time at a meal, or in prayer, or some other activity that will make you feel more connected rather than alienated? Let’s bring out the best in each other, expat and Qatar, South Asian and western, rather than the worst that is circling around us in the all the too present stereotypes.

After all — you know you’ll have some time — what else are you going to do while waiting for everything to open?