I often would get involved in discussions with my cynical and sarcastic father as well as smirking colleagues about my dating problems in the US. Basically, my gripe was that I could not get a date here in this country whereas back in the old country I could. My father would always remind me that I could not go back for political reasons and the native born Americans could not relate to the whole thing and just kept telling me to develop more confidence and then ask people to introduce me to someone, etc.
I was not only lonely but very frustrated sexually and I dreamt of passionate nights with the woman I loved or many women I loved, and things like that.
What if I go to another country? Many army guys would tell me there were great places to find love overseas. The grim answer my father would give when I suggested such things would always be:” you are running away from yourself”, and “you are trying to warm yourself at someone else’s fireplace”. Some religious people would tell me that I could not run away from my karma. Basically, all of them would try and dissuade me from leaving and going to another country to improve my luck.
I left 20 years ago and here is what I have learned:
Wherever you go, there you are, karmically that is. What do I mean by that? Well, some say that karma is an account that you carry inside your life. In that account you have debits and credits. You can only use so many credits. If you spend your credits on one thing, you will run out of credits to be spent on other things. It is like money. How does it work in real life? Ok, for example, you go to a country and there you finally find a girl of your dreams. Everything is going fantastic. Suddenly, horrible things happen in work and in business. What happened to me was that the company I worked for suddenly went bust, they did not pay me my salary, did not process me for the visa and I had to live on my credit cards. I ran up a huge bill. When I went back home, my life became a disaster just trying to pay back the debts. Then, while I was still supporting the girl and paying back the debts and renting her a place, some guy went into her room, raped her and then, to avoid punishment, married her. Anyway, it was one nasty thing after another. Really cruel stuff. As if some strange forces were at work to make my life miserable and push me back to “where I belonged”. Again I ended up lonely, poor and in an even worse condition than before. And it messed me up emotionally so bad that I could not hold down a job and was fired for bad performance. Ouch! That hurt!
But no karma is unredeemable. When going through hellish things like that, you are also “spending” karma, but you are using debits, not credits. It means basically that you are paying back your karmic debts. If you get back on your own two feet again and try to pull off a similar overseas stunt next time, you will find that this particular time things will be easier. You will still encounter resistance but not quite as bad and much easier to deal with. If again you do not succeed, your third time will be even easier. This is why many people urge you to never give up.
Eventually I was able to date and have great fun and came very close to finding the love of my life but this time it was me who was making the choice whether to accept it or not.
Anyway, what is my point? Well, it is that no matter where you go, you will have to deal with your destiny and your karmic “account”. Does that mean you should not become an expat? Not at all! Go and do what you have to do! Just do not be surprised if all kinds of vicious, nasty events starts coming out of your life and do not be scared by them. If you have a religion or some spiritual practice, do not stop following it and develop yourself further on the path to self improvement and enlightenment. This way, your multinational adventures will eventually give you the desired results.
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2 comments:
Another excellent post, thanks so much.
The rapist married her to avoid punishment, yikes! That is f***ed up, what an ordeal for you and her. Hard to imagine the emotions involved with such a turn of events.
The older I get, the more important it seems to have serious capital (scattered around different countries) as a buffer...no matter what happens, having some money in reserve makes it a lot easier to bear.
Would love to see an entry about how the international market for English teachers has been affected by the economic contraction that began in 2007.
Actually, the market has not been affected much in the countries themselves. What happened is that now u have more people looking for work so it is a bit harder to find good jobs. All it means though is that you will have to apply to 20 places instead of 10 and stay away from 1st world countries. The Gulf has not been affected and Korea, China and Taiwan have no been affected. But getting a job in the US, Japan, Germany and the UK has become much tougher.
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