We have come together not because of blood, but because we share bonds of a common outlook on life, a customary way of treating people with respect, and mutual values that resound within all of us – something which unfortunately does not always seem to happen in families related solely by blood (at least in my observation)…
The experience of being exiled … to one’s birth country
People that come to someplace to stay to live, work, or both have the same thing happen, but they don’t leave. And this is where the CURVE shows itself. Because after the initial enthusiasm of the “The Peak”, comes the valley.
I was speaking with one of my close friends, and we started talking about being embedded in a location versus being a nomad. I feel it is germane to being a TCK, a minimalist, and/or, a digital nomad.
I am a local. I am multi-local: I am or have been a local of London, Lahore, Dacca, New Delhi, Kuwait City, Dhahran, Manila, Bangkok, Pattaya, Tokyo, Salt Lake City, Evanston (Wyoming), Istanbul, Saigon, Hong Kong, Toronto, Freetown, Addis Ababa, Singapore. It seems like a lot but it’s kind of a blur.
However probably the one that I have enjoyed the most is the concept of ‘magic time’. I have consciously changed my schedule so that I now wake up generally between 4 – 430 a.m. every day.
… It really hit me. I have a serious blind spot as a TCK. And I think I’ve had it my whole life, and it has unwittingly gotten me into trouble many times.
As part of my minimalism kick, over the last year or so I have been going through what few mementos I still had. Most of my keepsakes burned up in a storage unit fire in the year 1999 – lost everything from my childhood and the military and family (very liberating in a way). But I still had stuff that I carried with me.
It comes from the fact, in western (European) cultures and mythology primarily, that a silver bullet is the one thing needed to kill supernatural creatures, mainly werewolves. From that it grew into a way of speaking about a simple solution to difficult or intractable problems. E.g. “I may have a silver bullet for this problem.”