A secret advantage to expatriation and immigration that no one seems to know.
Follow that link, seriously. Read it! NOW! Even if you are still in your home country while reading it.
I think that if I was blogging when I was traveling on my own in my early-to-mid twenties, I would have written something similar to this post. Why, because it was before my heart got distracted by all the other crap that I thought I should be doing. I have never been disappointed in the path I have taken, at times it has been long and winding. There were times though, that I sincerely thought I was doing what I should have been doing and truly felt led a-stray. Now I try to think of it as a life lesson learned late.
Take heed of these words so that they can inspire some part of your life beyond the potential shell that you are living.
“Do something small each day and nurture the inner child in you that’s hasn’t been allowed to come out and play. Let the roots of that tree go wherever they please. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.” !!!
livingtheamericandreamineurope.com 
I went to the link and read it. You are right. We are living a unique, amazing, beautiful, life changing experience. We are so cool for taking chances. For dropping everything and risking things. But look at us, we are adjusting, and we are happy, and we have routines!
Right!!!
The barriers of our past are gone. We have new challenges but different advantages.
The thing no one talks about is that this repatriation (in a sense, expatriation is repatriation) is reserved for the upper-middle class. While visiting Garmisch eight years ago, I fell in love with Germany. I’d move back in the blink of an eye, but I receive Social Security Disability. Even though I have the means with which to move, I do not have a place to return to. Reading very well-written columns like that to which this blog links consequently leaves a sad and bitter taste in one’s mouth. The simple fact is that repatriation especially to the European Union is impossible for all but the affluent.
Hilary, I had not thought of that. This brings up an interesting perspective that is often ignored or looked over, but often very present in the US: class. Since moving to Germany I have learned a lot about British culture, since one of my best friends is British. Class is a constant there, ever present and they don’t deny it. What is funny, in my opinion is that it is also ever present in the US, but as I already said, it often isn’t talked about, especially as you move up it. Both my husband and I were raised in middle to upper-middle class households in the US. Both parents work(-ed) and in doing so have been able to take good care of our families. I cannot speak more of my husbands family, but my own was likely upper-middle class, but my parents worked really hard to get there. My mother grew up on a farm with five other siblings and it was rare that anything was ever bought new. My father grew up in the blue collar working class and didn’t want the same struggles for his family. When I was growing up, my parents only ever took one day off a week to sustain a good life. They would never dream of packing it all up and moving to another country – even if they could. It is only really now that my husband and I begin to build our own family have I been able to reflect on all of that. I have always understood how hard my parents have worked and have always appreciated the comfortable position it helped put my sister and I in, and in a way it too helped get me (and my husband) here.
For many this wouldn’t be an option because it does either takes a great amount of capital in the beginning (or if you return too) and/or a great network of people that can support you either financially or emotionally. It is potentially better for the young and ambitious who can work a lot to save up the capital required to make such a move and/or obtain the education that would benefit such a move. I would like to think that my husband’s and my experience is a mix of ambition, youthfulness, education, experience and luck – all in some way possibly based on the socioeconomic class that we grew up in.
Thanks for your comment!
And thank you, too, for such a down-to-earth response. You know a country is heaven when you spent your younger years never having any desire to see it–in fact, idolizing other countries (in my case, France). I also originated from a solid middle-class background and got to know France sufficiently. When I landed at Franz Josef in the middle of a snowstorm in March, 2004, I thought I came to Transylvania.
Well, suffice it to say that if I could find a convent where they’d take in paying boarders, well, I’d scrub their toilets; that’s how much I fell in love with the cleanliness, the self-discipline, the mood of the place. So consider yourself blessed. But in fact these kinds of blessings are reserved for the young or affluent. Glad I found your blog!
Aw, thanks for the kind words!