Expatify

Travel & Expat Lifestyle Magazine

Becoming an expat will probably teach you patience, for better or worse

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If patience is truly a virtue, then becoming an expat probably has yet another reason to recommend it. This is something I’ve been thinking about lately as I find myself living in a modern city (in Serbia) that is quite removed from my upbringing and normal world.

Once again, if you are an expat and you’ve moved to New York or London or Berlin then this might not apply to you, but for the larger groups who have moved to less developed parts of the world, you know what I mean. The instant gratification of living in a modern city just isn’t available in most of the rest of the world.

Learning to wait for many things

Growing up in the Los Angeles area, if I thought about buying a new gadget I could literally own it maybe 30 minutes later. With big stores selling almost everything that are open 7 days a week, it was just a matter of hopping in my car and driving a few minutes, and the deal was done. Of course, this isn’t always a good thing, and living as an expat around the world I realize that it was often a bad thing.

The instant satisfaction of getting something right away is powerful, but when you look back even a few years you realize just how many of these quick purchases were too hasty. Maybe you only wore those shoes once or twice, or you bought a portable CD player that is now collecting dust in a closet. When you move everything you own to another country it forces you to think much more of the value of every item you own, and you realize how many things you really don’t need at all.

The same situation is true for many other things, like movies or even food items. When you are in a big modern city you can see any newer movie within an hour or two, and you can buy nearly any type of food you want before your next meal as well. But outside of those cities, it might take weeks or months to arrange to see a movie, and food items might also be out of reach. Each of these things is considered more carefully and you are forced to spend time deciding just how much you want it.

Even communications require planning

For most of us, when we are living in the same area as our lifelong friends, we are on the same general schedules as well. If it’s Friday after work for you, it’s Friday after work for most people you know. But when you move abroad there’s a good chance that your Friday after work is Friday morning or late Friday night for many of your old friends.

Again, and this is not really a good thing, but you have to plan your live conversations well in advance. In my life back home, I could call dozens of people who might be watching the same TV show or sporting event I am. Living in another country, I’m asleep when those things are on, and I have to wait a day or two in order to chat with someone about it.

Having to wait helps appreciation, but it’s not all good

It seems that people develop patience as they get older, whether they are living in their home country or not, and this does seem to cut down on anxiety and add a calmness to life. Moving abroad you will probably find that you have to wait for many things that used to be instant back home, and this certainly helps us appreciate each thing as it comes along.

Of course, having to wait for simple things also brings frustration in many cases as well. There’s a new gadget (like an iPad) announced and it might not be available in your new country for months, if at all. When you get your hands on that gadget you are likely to have thought hard about whether you really want or need it, and you’ll really appreciate it once it is yours.

In my own experience, expats tend to be far less materialistic than they used to be, because buying a house full of stuff doesn’t make much sense in another country. And most expats seem to focus more on relationships and experiences than they used to, probably because they have even more importance when you take away the house full of stuff. But still, having to wait for so many things is a challenge, and it’s not always clear that it helps enough to make it worth it.

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