Another wedding missed, another funeral went by, another graduation passed

I wrote this several months ago after a good friend`s wedding invitation arrived and I had to disappointingly announce my foreseen absence. I decided to bring this up now after seeing several posts on social media saying how people abroad now have less hope in coming home after their study abroad lives. This began with my own reflections on the burdens of studying abroad. Then transitions to talk about the subject of returning to the home country.

Another wedding missed, another funeral went by, another graduation passed

I started studying abroad during my senior high school years. I applied for a scholarship to a neighboring country with a group of friends for togetherness sake and I passed. Not fully knowing the risks, I accepted and began my first overseas studies. During fleeting discussion, upon hearing that I was given the chance to study abroad, I remembered a lot of compliments and words of envy. Often there was mention of the other side of the conversation wished to be provided the same opportunity. Family members providing affirmation that studying abroad would be good for the future and opens more opportunities. Soon, teachers would mention the importance of remembering the home country and to give back to the country. The sentences change over the years, but the main theme remained the same. Studying overseas is a blessing, and returning to home country is a given.

But I found the costs of my time overseas to be haunting me lately. All the missed events with family and friends. I remembered the difficulty of building a new support system in the destination country. I remembered the difficulty of not being able to converse deep conversations about the world with close friends. There is a mental burden that I kept in the background is the fact that time is limited. In the most basic sense, I realize that by being overseas, I am missing a lot of time with my parents. In an evocative realization, I realized that being abroad broke my emotional standing in some ways.

When I was born, my mother was 36 years old, and my father was 40 years old. After which I grew and my first memory of meaningful interaction with them was (based on their confirmation of my particular memory) when I was 3 years old. The memory was my father telling me the difference between left and right while using tennis ball to demonstrate the importance of indication left and right. After that I went to kindergarten, primary school and junior high-school for 9 short years before I began studying in Singapore. Not long after, I returned to finish my University education which gave me 5 years with them, with 1 interrupted year in the middle as I finished a Masters degree in the United Kingdom. Then I had to spend 1 year of compulsory internship, followed with an internship in the home town for one year before I once again ship away to Japan for PhD program which would take a minimum of 4 years. Which means, so far I have had only enjoyed 18 years (of memorable time) with my parents.

Let me continue on this topic by bringing up the Indonesian average life expectancy, which is 69.1. I will be optimistic here knowing that my parents lead a healthy life and knows well how to take care of themselves, thus giving them perhaps up to 85 years old. Hence, my total memorable experience with them would be around 46 years This simple mathematics led me to conclude that so far I only had spent 39% of that time near them. Around 10% was spent overseas, and the upcoming 51% seem to have been cut already as I continue my studies overseas. Just realizing this should depict the kind of emotional cost that I endured during this blessed overseas studies, and made me realize to utilize whatever I can to spend this time as efficient as possible.

With the development of communication technology, I realized that talking over the phone is now cheaper and easier than ever before. I also I realized I spend a lot of time in messaging apps talking to my friends, personally or in a chat group. Yet, I realized that the chat screen with my parents were barren of exciting stories of my day or their day. Studying overseas made me question: how is it that I can connect better with my friends than with my parents…? And the answer came in several realizations:

First, my parents were not technologically literate. It was annoying to have them chat in the messaging applications and to teach them how to use the various video call programs. But I endured with the thought that, once upon a time, my father taught me the difference between left and right with a tennis ball, and I spent the time to teach them the advances of technology. It was a big investment and I am so very happy to have done it. Now I can chat daily with my mother through a messaging app, sometimes she even typed faster than me in her phone. My father now video calls me every so often and I can update him on my progress. At first sometimes I found it to be difficult because I have to explain to him about the details in my work. Yet, as I looked at my ability to discern my left hand and my right hand, I devoted myself in explaining to him the basis of my work and it led to a much enjoyable conversation in the following days.

Which led to my second realization: my parents want to be in my life not because they are nosy parents, but because that`s what humans do. We want to help those who are important to us and trying to bury the fear that we have become irrelevant in the lives of those that we love. Studying overseas helped me realize this plain fact that the reason why sometimes I felt annoyed at talking about my life to my parents, is because they had no idea what was going on in my life. And to be frank… I had no idea what was going on in their lives. Studying overseas helped me appreciate this gap and acknowledge that by closing this information gap, I could build a better and more efficient connection with my parents. Both technologically and emotionally.

Moving on from parents, as I went to study overseas I left behind childhood friends that grew up with me. People that shared stories as we develop personality and inside jokes with each other. Deep inside I always fear that my going away would make me lose my place in their lives. That as I went abroad, they would think that they became less important as I miss their important live events. And perhaps some of them have thought that and there is nothing I could do to prevent that. It eats me up inside sometimes to realize that even though the world has become smaller with the advent of technology, time has never sympathize its speedy passing. There had been events that passed and I could do nothing but send them a thoughtful message through electronic means. In all those message I mentally send all my thoughtfulness and hope that my emotions charged up some kind of mystical powers in the technology that my friends can feel. However, in this matter, studying abroad had shown me its silver lining. During all those years, it naturally filtered the people that are fundamental in my lives. I always have a group of friends that I can meet anytime I have the chance, and require no effort at all to catch up in daily lives or personal philosophical-standing changes. During times that I felt I miss so much of my friends` lives, I can only hold on to this fundamental group of friends that kept me tethered to the reality that my existence means something to those that mean a lot to me.

But it eliminated none of my friends from my life, because this situation also led me to be able to appreciate acquaintances more. People that I met shortly and did not get to be really close to during my exposure to them, like my secondary school friends from Singapore. I met one such friend several months ago when he decided to visit Japan. My new appreciation of companionship allowed me the determination to meet him and had a long conversation about our lives. Such appreciation allowed me to open up a meaningful conversation faster and connect with other acquaintances in ways I never knew I could. In ways that made me wish I had connected with him better during my secondary school years. It made me a better conversationalist as I realize that each conversation matters, every story is a precious opportunity and the interaction a gem in my daily life. In this instance, I made sense that not all good friends have to be longtime friends, and not all good conversations have to come from talking. Most of them comes from asking the right questions and listening. This led to a set of skill that allowed efficient productive interaction that allowed me to build the support system I needed during my overseas studies, which was one of the challenges I mentioned earlier.

The pressure to return to the home country had always been big. Being a developing country, people naturally wishes for other people to fix the place. When they look that there are a bunch of people who got the opportunity to improve their own lives abroad, naturally most people see the chance to unload such burden to develop the country to that group. Personally I take this responsibility rather seriously. However, the method of my practice may not be the same as everyone. Some people may come back as soon as possible to spread the knowledge capital they earned abroad. Some people may have chosen to remain back and endure the distance away from their family to gain more reputation and knowledge to be able to contribute in their unique fields. But, I also realized that I can empathize people that refuse the responsibility, asking logically and honestly: why should I give back when I received nothing much in the first place? I know of a friend who moved abroad and studied well and had no intention of returning. Why would he want to return? In the home country, his family was considered a minority and had not much friends other than close families in the home country. His studies were self-funded and he earned scholarships due to his own prowess. In addition, it was not as if he had reach a certain level of wealth to be able to help many people anyway. It was kind of an unwritten bitter realization that one cannot help others while one cannot help oneself. I had one of those meaningful conversation with him and definitely empathize with his strong emotions of never taking the responsibility to return and help build the home country.

In passing, people have asked me why would I commit to returning to the home country? Perhaps out of respect to privacy, they never delved deep on my reasoning, and truth be told sometimes I cannot explain it myself. But the way I see it, it is in the big picture and global interest to return to the home country and “give back” so to say. We live together in one big planet, and like it or not, one way or another, we are all connected to one another. After learning what I needed during my studies abroad, I would gain quite a sum of professional knowledge in my field of work to improve it. The social difficulty of doing so have been mentioned to me so many times by my friends and family, but I hope that my previous newfound appreciation of human interaction would allow me to power through it and mold it or myself towards an improvement for the greater good. It may be silly to me to mention in such basic terms, but in the big picture, I found that without returning to the home country, all we have done is delay the inevitable decline of highly-capable people which would slowly lead to the decline of the home country. And, being a big picture kinda guy, I think that would somehow lead to repercussions felt in other countries, even in the country that we studied/worked in or decided to never return from.

I can imagine those reading this article already have in their mind sentences such as “he is such a young optimist. We`ll see how he breaks when he come home”. If you are one of such reader, truly I can empathize with that thought. Even I sometimes fell to that apprehension. How can I not? So often the media portray the failures of such people. Returning only to be criticized and ridiculed. Failing to improve their home country and failing to convince the world that they did went abroad to do something good for their country. All I can say is that I truly hope that one day I am the lucky few that can alleviate that negativity from you.

Studying abroad broke people in many ways. The journey came with a lot of realizations of the time we lost with loved ones. Returning home tends to be even more of a heart-breaking experience. But here is hoping that my article added a little bit of optimism against those naysayers. And finally, a shout out to those who are now abroad with the realization that in the big picture, one way or another, we will contribute to the home country.