Month: September 2014

Home Shock

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I recently returned to my hometown after being away for over a year.

As my plane flew over my great salty lake and soured parallel to those ‘oh so familiar’ mountains, my heart began to beat faster. The excitement I experienced upon touching down at the airport easily rivaled the excitement I got from first leaving 14 months ago.

The plane needed to dock faster because I was about to surprise my friends and family and the exhilarating part was that no one knew I was even coming. I missed my friends, their familiar faces had frequented my dreams as I anticipated seeing them again. I had been planning this surprise arrival for months and what made me nervous was that they were going to experience the new travel me.

When it comes to travel, what we don’t often hear about is home shock. Often, most things remain the same back at home, yet us travelers have quite literally seen the world and travel has a way of speeding up the inevitable. Long exposure to change, differences, and experiences tend to alter a person, and the realization of the contrast can cause a bit of an identity tremor.

Accompanied with the excitement of seeing friends I hadn’t seen in a while, was a slight concern of my expected behavior. How much had I changed? Was it enough to shock the people who knew me? One thing I’ve noticed about human behavior is that folks tend not to like change. We appreciate when our friends and surroundings are familiar, and the dislike of alterations have spawned negative associations to the statement, “she’s changed.”

I’ve noticed something about the emotion of nervousness; it’s that it’s identical to the feeling of excitement only with different thoughts behind it. So I decided to sit comfortably, or as comfortably as I could, in my new skin. If I changed then I changed, and my friends and family would have to be happy for it.

SLC crew
Zazz and friends.

I quickly found that the acceptance of my friends and family was the last thing to get nervous about, after all, I was still me and they love me. However, home shock came from an existential realization of change. We all eventually reminisce of days past and who we used to be; it’s the consequence of time.

Twenty years from now I’ll be a different person, and twenty years from then I’ll be another different person; and forty years from now you will be a different person too. This is because change always affects us, and change is inevitable. While driving along my old streets I realized that even my city will dramatically alter in another 50 years or less.

Culture shock affects us because it forces us to look at life and ourselves in another light. Home shock affects us because it forces us to look at our past, future, and present in another light. That new perspective on things lit up the realization that living in the moment is the only way to truly live.

A Questioning Mind

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I teach English in Japan, and one of my advanced students often has questions that give me a delighted shock. The thing is, his questions are so simple that I’m always surprised as to why I’ve never asked them or thought about them myself.

Why do they say “sweating like a pig” and not another animal?

How can you be thrilled to bits? Does that mean you are literally falling apart?

He’s a university professor, which might explain his questioning mind. All the same, last night he had yet another silly yet brilliant question.

We were reading an article about racism in Australia and he wanted to know what ‘Down Under’ meant. I explained that Australia was referred to as ‘Down Under’ because of its position on a globe or map of the world. He nodded to show his understanding and then I saw his brow furrow; I knew another question was coming.

“Does it include New Zealand?” he asked. “

No,” I replied and then thought, why DOESN’T it include New Zealand? “That’s a really good point,” I said, “And a really good question because New Zealand is even further south than Australia!” We paused for a moment to think when suddenly he inspired me to have a like-minded moment of wonder.

“Maybe New Zealand should be called, Really Down Under.” I suggested.

In the English language we have many idioms that to us, are just what we say. It’s not often we stop and think about the actual words and it’s rare when we question the origins of a saying. That’s one of the best things about teaching English as a second language: you learn so much about your own language.

Already this year I’ve discovered the origins of a number of idioms, including ‘in seventh heaven’ and ‘on cloud nine’. The first refers not to Christianity, but too much earlier in history when the Sumerian civilization was flourishing. According to their beliefs there were seven heavens and to reach the seventh was to be closest to God. ‘On cloud nine’ is a phrase that is believed to have come from meteorologists who often refer to nine types of clouds in terms of altitude. A cloud with the number nine is the highest in altitude and hence, a person who is on cloud nine is literally on top of the world.

I’m so thankful I have students with questioning minds, for without them, I would probably never discover so many things myself. They say a teacher is there to teach and that the teacher is the one with the knowledge. I think that teachers and students are both learning and teaching; from each other, from the world, about each other and also about ourselves. Never stop learning, for each time we learn something new, we grow just a little bit more.