I grew up in post-communism in a fractured generation. Each with its own bubble.

Wellbeing in Europe International
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Very interesting you read your experiences here. So similar with mine in many ways.

First time I came to Belgium was in 1999, high school. I got enrolled in Institut catholique Saint Boniface in Ixelles. Had a very weird episode there with the principle inviting me to his office, trying to find in a shady way if I was Ortodox or Catholic, beeting around the bush, then giving me special treatment when he found out. I also saw how all the kids kept separate in school, divided by race, it felt so wrong. I left Belgium 2 months later, disgusted.

When I moved to Brussels again 2 years later I found it refreshing nobody was asking me about my nationality or religion out of some hidden agenda, if it happened it was out of curiosity. I met people from all over the world and it was an amazing experience.

Even though I have changed so much, just like you. The thing is, I believe we changed way more than people who stayed in our countries…it’s just that we perceive they changed a lot :wink:.
I am not distanced from local politics at all, especially not the one in Balkans. At first I resented it, felt powerless and frustrated, but as time passed by I felt I cannot just ignore it. I feel there is more hope and potential for change there, here the system became too strong. Also the change is more urgent there than here in western hemisphere but not for the reasons you might think.

Few years in I realised how special Brussels was and, in spite all the things I resent about it, it is by large the reason I keep coming back to it. Brussels is a city of nomads, of expats, of people out of place but actually in perfect place for them…you might say we form a new nation. Nation based on similar experiences, feelings, perception or belief…I would say it is a belief we are human above all.

Nations are a rather recent invention in human history so I really don’t see why should anyone look at it as something permanent, I don’t. I believe more and more people realise this and in fact solution to accelerate such an evolution is to create better living conditions. From what I see, poorer someone is more likely he is to be influenced by manipulators using nation, race, religion or any other mean to create bigger divisions in society and rule on that foundation of fear of ‘the other side’.

And yes, as @natalia_skoczylas said, result of me moving so much around is that I feel at home everywhere as well :slight_smile:

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I think I see this too in my environment. But I would never say it out loud, it sounds a bit presumptious no? The implication seems to be: ‘I evolved, you haven’t’. And who wants to stay still?

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Well I didn’t say we changed in a good way (evolved) and they haven’t :wink:

Experiencing different things, meeting different people,cultures, viewpoints etc, expands your own and normally helps you a great deal in personal development. So even if you said that you evolved more than they did, it would make sense even though it would sound arrogant.

That’s why I don’t judge though, maybe I wouldn’t have evolved much if I stayed in my home town my whole life (Zadar). In fact, it’s highly likely. Why would an organism evolve if it hasn’t changed environment (living conditions)? :smiley:.

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This is so true, whenever I am back in Lublin, where I studied, i go to the hip bars and meet my old friends and they have the same conversations… For real! 10 years later. Nothing bad about it, it’s just a different experience, i completely agree.

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Well, not so long ago I spent an afternoon with @hugi working on some stuff. After a couple of hours we are hungry and go to get some food around the corner. On arrival we meet an old acquaintance of mine whom I hadnt seen in years. Asked him how he was. He had had two kids he said. i asked him how that was - “well it is not as bad as my job”.

On the other hand friends who went out into the world and experienced and did wild stuff- they went back home and settled into nice comfortable lives. They were somehow in the same place, and living fairly conventional lives - but the way they arrived there was one in which their personal development lead them there. An active, well thought through choice. And they are happy.

So it’s pretty unpredictable I think and varies from person to person.

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This is such an exciting post, @noemi I apologize it has taken me so long to answer your ping but, as you know, I moved once again to a new city. I left my hometown 14 years ago and I have been reconstructing my social world since then. I think the ‘home bubbles’ and the ‘abroad bubbles’ have always been fluid for me - ‘home’ and ‘abroad’ have blurry boundaries. Even in my darkest, least hopeful moments, when it felt like I didn’t have a home anymore or a language that feels like home, I tried to remind myself that I left Romania for NYC because I was curious to learn about the world. This is also the reason for which I try to keep my bubbles porous - I believe that if I want to learn with others I cannot live in the comfort of a cozy space. My struggle has been to deconstruct ideas that society takes for granted - that ‘home’ needs to be a stable space, a comfortable one, a space of predictability and intimacy (hence my interest in co-housing). But most homes are not like that or, more accurately, they are like that only in the simplified narratives we create about them. From my experience, there is a lot of hard work involved in building a home both ‘at home’ and ‘abroad’. So, it is this hard work of making a home that keeps me sane because I know that, if I am honest with myself, wherever I go I will have to engage in it. This realization has saved me from cultural shocks and the disappointment with old or new friends. Of course, some days it feels easier to fall back on given narratives about homes and homelands…but those days pass. More difficult is losing friends because of such relocations in space but then again friendships are dialogues and some dialogues end or morph into something else. I guess, I find my wellbeing in trying to stay curious, kind and open to the world around me even when I don’t feel like it or when the world around doesn’t seem particularly kind to me (poetry helps too) :slight_smile:

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There is an old saying in English, “home is where the heart is.”

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Yes. And you know how sometimes you’re so far from the normal idea of home that you have a hard time understanding just how far? I don’t even distinguish between nuclear family home and co-housing as a home, because this is not where the action is imho (even thogh it could be a crucial distinction for many, and rightly so). I think it comes down to the heart, in the sense of feeling of belonging, no matter how the home setup looks like. That was hard to rebuild after I left Cluj for good, simply because I had thought I belong there, because my people were there. Only to realise that having 2 homes is even more rewarding, feeling safe and at ease in two places, or more. But in the absence of this feeling, a sense of wondering the world would not do it, not for me. It does work for @natalia_skoczylas and others though. Maybe because you two and others are more at ease at engaging with the places you’re in.

@Nadia made this comment of your ‘community of fate’ being very much tied to land and rituals. I find it very interesting as well, this deep attachment:

How these narratives can carry people through rough times due to a sense of being a community of fate. The rituals, again tied to place and people, which everyone of the place has internalised often have the role of weaving together communities. The older they are, the more thoroughly they are grounded in your person - because of childhood memories etc. A solid common ground. (source)

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On this topic I recommend @medhin_paolos 's beautiful account of the relationship of and within Diaspora communities that settle in the land of former colonial powers:

"The Eritrean/Ethiopian community has been present in Italy for at least half a century and it has been actively integrated into the social and cultural life of the city. Starting from the collective memories of the community, on the ground of photo documents, the film gathers together the legacy of personal stories, exploring the different shades of identity, migration and the aspirations of the people"



Our @alberto has explored this part of north Italian heritage through the eyes and voices of the Mondine - who took part in partisan resistance movement during the second world war:


Also Maybe @mstn can shed light on this relationship to land/place (if my memory doesn’t fail me he wanted to be a herder of goats or cows in the mountains?)

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These are fantastic quotes, @Olimpia. You said it better than I did: the work of building your home, of making yourself at home in a community – be it the one you grew up in or one you arrived at later in life – is good work. Exhausting and frustrating at times, but good work overall. It carries meaning, and I am proud to do it.

@nadia evoked my own work as a musician with traditional music from the corner of the world I grew up in. Leaving Emilia, and then leaving Italy, did not mean I had to leave that behind, not at all. Instead, I carry this identity with me, wherever I go. It does not make much of a difference, in fact: even in Italy, even in Emilia, it is very much a peripheral identity, although in some cases a respected one. Wherever I am, I and the people closest to me are never more than one small thread in the worldsong. As I go, I pick up new notes, and, very carefully, integrate them in the thread, so that they make a harmonious whole. There has never been any need to turn my back on anything important.

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I think I disagree with the statement that communal vs nuclear living is not where the action is - the creation of nuclear living is so tied to neoliberal capitalism and slow decay of social relations that for me it has to be worked against. I am not hoping for it to disappear completely, but further separation and isolation only supports the logic of business as usual late capitalism we live in - with all its environmental, economical and other human disasters. Living with people is hard work, even harder when people are out of your bubbles (happened to me this year, our flatmate is sooo damn different from what I’d like her to be… but then, it’s a learning experience I’m having with her I wouldn’t have with anyone who is like me;)), but maybe this is a way to try to mend the rift in contemporary societies, fighting for the opinions on the barricades almost.

I learned to see everywhere I am as home, which is very helpful when you roam the world constantly and have no relation with your real family - I was forced to build a stability for myself in this weird setup. It’s precarious, I’m aware of it, but I am also very lucky with supportive, empathic, generous human beings, and that’s often much more than you’d get from your family. I’m grateful for that.

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Yeah. Maybe I wasn’t clear, sorry about that. I meant that, at least for me, it’s not this that will make more of a home or not, it’s really the people. Yes, we need to expand on our narratives of home and re-shape those which are currently not working because they contribute to isolation, and all the things you say. But for me what was an unexpected admission was that my home is in people, not in any land per se or arbitrary house setup. So that comes after, rather than being a prerequisite. It’s like the basic level of Maslow’s pyramid, but layered for what makes a safe and loving home.
It’s also why I notice that some people can move out of their land or country courageously when they follow dear ones. It’s like taking their soul home with them…

So what @Olimpia says about challenging the idea that ‘‘home’ needs to be a stable space, a comfortable one, a space of predictability and intimacy’ - it’s a little more difficult for those of us wired for safety and intimacy as a basis for anything else.

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@noemi, I agree with you that safety and intimacy are important but, in my view, they are not givens. They are values we learn with others and, like any other values, they have particular histories; they are embedded in systems of political, economic and social relations. As @natalia_skoczylas pointed out, nuclear family is very much a product of a specific political economic system and it has tremendously benefited it. More collective forms of dwelling have their own histories. So, while I agree with you that ‘home is in people’ and with @johncoate that ‘home is where the heart is’, I would still add that home - as a feeling, a physical space, a social landscape - is built in relation to one or more societies (from which we leave, where we arrive). This is why I said that we need to deconstruct, to challenge our understandings of home, intimacy, safety. In order to stay sane we never simply deconstruct, we also build with others homes, but the exercise of deconstruction is important because it shows us why we choose to live in a particular way; it also renders the work necessary to live like that visible and more valuable. This type of work might burst some bubbles, create dialogue and help us find “a way to try to mend the rift in contemporary societies” @natalia_skoczylas

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I agree with you that home is built in relation to one of more societies. That neat little phrase does relay a certain truth, but it obviously has no nuance.

I am someone who was raised in a strong nuclear family, who went on the road and lived as a nomad and then left the region where I was raised and lived for all of my 20s in an intentional community that was entirely created from nothing by the people involved, without help from outside.

But although that community still exists in a different and diminished form (meaning I could have stayed there to this day), I chose to leave with my own new family and move back to California, closer to my widowed mother and my brothers.

Many from the intentional community I left also moved back to California where we had started, and we are now a group of more than 100 people who are still very close. Indeed my daughter married the son of one of my friends from that community. So we are still all “pretty tight” with each other.

But - and here is my point if you will - if I had a personal tragedy, or needed to come up with substantial money or some other large problematic event, it is to my biological family I would turn rather than my friends.

But that is just me. I know others in that tribe who don’t really have biological families they can turn to so it is to the tribe that they turn. Plenty of Kickstarter campaigns where the tribe does all the donating are some of the evidence.

So, since one size really does not fit all, maybe “home is where the heart is” constitutes a comforting reality for those who need it.

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Screenshot_20191116-203127_Chrome

:slight_smile:

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I read your statements with interest. Well, not all but most. I realized that my dear friend went to the West, I suppose for reasons you are writing about. I am convinced that the desire to change his life has driven him more than issues of existence. I have never been strongly motivated to leave my homeland, although sometimes I wanted to quit everything and become a shepherd in the Eastern Carpathians;) To tell you the truth, I have never met a larger group of people who decided to emigrate because of the political or social atmosphere of their country. I am not talking about persecution, but about a certain feeling and atmosphere

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In the 90s in Romania migration was driven by economics, but under the issue of not making a good living was a shaky political climate. So it comes down to that some way or another.

The newest waves of migration are more political I believe - people are disillusioned. Social groups and the ways communities live or trust each other can also be tied to politics. It’s hard to have a tight community if the political climate seeds distrust and polarization. But then again, you have communities that were plagued by war and conflict, who can recover despite of that - but that’s because you have a ‘deepening of democracy’ as a political opportunity. One about which I’m currently reading about is Cambodia.

That said, my leaving was deeply personal, like your friend’s.

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In your entries, you mentioned as political reasons for emigration - nationalist intensification and conservatism.

Well, actually these values and attitudes are very close to me. And I do not think that in my country the situation is bad or unfavorable towards minorities.

Although I understand that someone else may have a different perception.

However, I would like to mention that some Poles, half jokingly, half seriously mention that maybe a wave of refugees will soon come to Poland. Refugees - Christians who value traditional values. I do not think this would happen, but I agree that the European Union and political correctness have made Europe an area of influence of soft totalitarianism - in a form completely unknown before. Without concentration camps and mass violence, but with the all-powerful dictate of “leftist” political correctness.

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@nadia (Hi!), sorry for the late reply! You remember right. I volunteered as a shepherd helper. Unfortunately, not for long periods. :cowboy_hat_face: :cow: :cow: :cow:

We live in a very abstract society where the consequences of our actions are not immediately visible (Thoreau?). If you work in an “old-style” farm, instead, you see the results of your work. Shoveling goat shit is the most rewarding job in the world because at the end of the day you can see a huge heap of shit. The proof that you did well and life is meaningful. :poop: :goat:

Nietzsche said that, in human prehistory, the value of an action depended only on its consequences (pre-moral values). Later religions created some abstract values. People started to act by principles regardless of their consequences. Today technology has replaced religion in this function. Since Over-Men and Over-Women have not come yet, the practice of primitive “immorality” is healthy.

I am not sure if I can shed light on the themes of this thread. What I can say about my experience is that living and working in an alpine farm has the same problems as co-housing/co-working. Just harder, I guess. The work is not physically demanding: cows are decent people after all. However, it is a 24/7 job and working conditions, even in the summer, are not always ideal (rain and shit are ok, humidity and children are bad). The main challenge is to live very close to your fellow human beings. There is no space for privacy and you should work hard to make them likeable. I slept under the roof of a rugged cabin together with the fridge where yogurt was stored (we had electricity but no tap water). So my afternoon naps were often interrupted by who was coming for yogurt.
But, if the people alchemy works, then you can experience a family-like intimacy, a sense of safety, meaning and home.

Unfortunately, social relations of this kind are disappearing. Traditional herding is not competitive with food market prices. Valleys are abandoned. Population aging, alcoholism, suicides and other social problems are common in marginal areas of the Alps.

“The Wind Blows Round” by Giorgio Dritti 2005 is a movie about these topics and the land/place relationship. Full movie for free on public Italian tv (no idea why it is under “sport”). Hopefully, visible also from abroad.

If I remember, in “Without Ever Reaching The Submit”, the novelist Paolo Cognetti (he is a city guy, Milan, but he is cool) said something more or less like “Roads are supposed to take wealth, but they often take people away”. This is what happened and is still happening.

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@alberto for reef ^^