Being Foreign

The Economist diseca clinic chestiunea spinoasa a emigrarii si exilului, ca un doctor pregatit sa testeze amorteala anesteziei in carne, cu bisturiul proaspat ascutit.

Cu alte cuvinte, impecabil.

It is becoming both easier and more difficult to experience the thrill of being an outsider.

Din experienta exilului se nasc sentimente de anxietate si tensiuni creatoare - the qualities of it - displacement, anxiety, disorientation, incongruity, melancholia - became the modern literary sensibility.
Living in a foreign country can evoke many of the emotions of childhood: novelty, surprise, anxiety, relief, powerlessness, frustration, irresponsibility.

Consecinta cea mai stranie si, fara dubiu, cea mai dureroasa e sentimentul de a fi strain atunci cand ajungi "acasa".

Somewhere at the back of it all lurks homesickness, which metastises over time into its incurable variant, nostalgia. And nostalgia has much in common with the Freudian idea of melancholia - a continuing, debilitating sense of loss, somewhere within which lies anger at the thing lost. It is not the possibility of returning home which feeds nostalgia, but the impossibility of it.

In final, dilema pare a se reduce la libertate vs. fraternitate - iar pentru cei ce aleg placerea libertatii, the pains ce o insotesc e pretul (mai scump sau mai ieftin) platit.

Emigrarea, ca experienta, are potentialul si promisiunea de a altera cursul si perceptia unei vieti, astfel incat, exact ca la intalnirea cu prima (marea) dragoste, timpul se scindeaza permanent in before si after. Aproape ca atunci cand musti din fructul interzis si realizezi ca intoarcerea la conditia a priori de inocenta (sau inconstienta placuta) e imposibila, iar noua cunoastere dobandita s-a inradacinat deja adanc, ca si cand ar fi fost dintotdeauna acolo, macinand incet certitudinile vietii trecute, astfel incat cu greu iti amintesti ca ai trait si altfel, altundeva.