Meet cross cultural people of all ages from all over the world. What is a Third Culture Kid (TCK)?
I had an interesting discussion with Ruth today.
Recently she has again heard from several places “Oh, this [TCK issues] are from your generation. Nowadays, kids have Facebook and email and these aren’t really their issues any more…”
What is your opinion on this?
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June 25th, 2008 at 10:15 am
I’m one person who never kept childhood friends. Once there was a move, that was the end of the friendship.
These past few weeks, I have managed to find some of my old friends on Facebook. Like I found a friend of mine who I last spoke to in 1993! Its a thrill to find them but somehow its hard to really connect - there’s the catching up because the friendship cannot continue exactly the way you left it. Things changed!
OK, so I’m happy I found my friends but there was a point where I felt that maybe I shouldn’t have. That maybe it was better to just keep the good memories I have of them than to bring them back into my life.
Then there is the whole virtual life and real life being two different things.
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June 25th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Even with internet and skype etc.. I found that many of my friendships have petered away with time.
It is hard to keep a friendship growing constantly when you stop experiencing life with them regularly. After I left my international school I stayed sort of in the circle of my friends for about a year or so. But after that many of my friends at the school began relocating aswell or creating new circles of friends with new students I didn’t know. At this point it became hard to always relate to because their environment was changing just as mine was.
Of course there are still ppl I keep in contact with allot, but for the majority of my old friends I feel as if I don’t know who they are now, I just remember what they were like then. This type or way of knowing almost defines our left over relationship.
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June 26th, 2008 at 1:53 am
THe exact same thing has happened to me too Lauren. After I graduated from my international school, my friends and I kept in close contact for about a year, maybe more, and then it started petering away.
With some there’s always a feeling that if we were to meet, it would be like we never left (which is a good and bad thing for what anayawa was talking about, because the friendships never developed past what we left off from), with others it died, instead of freezing. Time, new environments, new people and in summary new lives, changed them as our environments changed us. And since we’re TCKs, this has a particular impact upon us beyond what others probably feel.
But what I think we shouldn’t lose track of is our ability to make new friends, which in many ways helps us to rediscover old friends. It’s similar, and you already have something in common.
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June 26th, 2008 at 2:10 am
It’s often easier for a person to let a friendship gradually fade away than let the goodbye at the airport be the absolute end which happens as suddenly as a stroke. Although I have to say that in some cases, the friendship doesn’t fade, it just transforms gradually into something different from what it was before or evolves into the next level, but remains intact.
I have a childhood friend who I’ve known since nursery school and there was a period in our lives when we lost touch for 10 years. These were our lost years as TCKs when we were in such a struggle to make new adjustments in our repatriation and getting our university degreese that we just didn’t have time to deal with things, i.e. anything to do with our past.
When we got back in touch however, it was for me like going home to a place where someone knew me so well I didn’t have to explain anything. A few words would suffice to explain things I was feeling that a thousand words could not explain to other people, including members of my own family.
Right now my friend is in Australia getting his Master’s degree and I haven’t heard from him in months now. The thing is this doesn’t bother me much anymore because I know that I still have a place in his heart as he does with me.
In the mean time we are both getting on with our lives in the present. We meet knew people, we make new friends, etc.
But I have this feeling of security that if I called him now, things would be the same as before.
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June 26th, 2008 at 3:48 am
Facebook and MSN only helps slightly, but it doesn’t mean that it solves all the issues.
I find that Facebook does help me keep it touch, but it always depends on the person you’re keeping in touch with. Some friendships have grown whilst others have just faded away, despite the amount of cyberspace connections that I have.
Although some friends- things just pick up where we left them whenever I get back in touch after months of not seeing them, simply because we have our own lives and things.
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July 3rd, 2008 at 9:49 pm
I’ve just moved away from a country and, usually, I don’t let myself get too attached to the people, the culture, the school, anything. But in the last place I was, I let myself become bonded to these people.
Yes. I have them on facebook.
Yes. I email them frequently.
But I still have this gaping hole in my heart where my friends were.
The internet is great, but it takes the personality out of your interaction.
I have a friend I talked to every day about every thing, face to face.
Not even the super power that is the internet can make up for that.
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July 4th, 2008 at 10:29 am
If there were ways that the Internet, Facebook, etc., could provided more assistance in dealing with some of the challenges that were listed in several of the posts, i.e., belongingness, grief and loss, navigating and maintaining relationships, parenting, careers what would be needed to make this happen or at least more helpful to the experiences of being TCKs/CCKs/globa nomads/brats?
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