Saying goodbye the expatriate way
Print Edition
IT was 1990. I was saying goodbye, readying to leave Europe for college in the United States when I crossed paths with my favorite high school teacher. “Well, well, well, Mr Eaton,” he said. “Where are you off to: Twin Cities, Big Apple, Motor City, Windy City, you know Chicago?” Unwilling to commit, I instead asked him what he was getting up to that summer. The enigmatic Mr Cecil Seymour replied, “Mountain climbing, scuba diving, always in the water.”
2014. Not much has changed. Like many students and teachers across Shanghai, I am saying my goodbyes this month. I know where I will be living and working next year, but “where am I off to?” A sense of insecurity and uncertainty prevail. This may be part and parcel of being a lifetime expat, not having somewhere I can truly call home, where all of my friends and family can be found. Then again, maybe its indicative of the time we live in, or maybe it’s just me. I’d written in my high school yearbook that my life’s ambition was to move back to Michigan and watch American football on Sundays, something I couldn’t do growing up in the Netherlands. I made it back to Michigan, but didn’t stay long. An international education opened the world to me, yet paradoxically also left me somewhat lost, to use the title of one of Kurt Vonneget’s last books, “A Man Without a Country.”
Nevertheless, for almost 25 years, as I have said many goodbyes, Mr Seymour’s words have remained a constant: “Mountain climbing, scuba diving, always in the water.”
Indeed, for those of us who have called Shanghai home, it may well be the views from the summit we will remember most. Ships bellowing down the Huangpu River from the towers of the Peace Hotel’s Cathay Room, or purple sunsets as seen from the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. Goals achieved and friendships forged also represent peaks, mountains climbed.
I’m happy to say that 18 really isn’t that different from 42. We shouldn’t fear growing old, or saying goodbye. Rather, we might fear staying put. It’s easy to stay in the valley of one’s homeland, safe from foreign alps and rocky, uncharted shorelines, but oh so much less interesting. Where there is insecurity and uncertainty, there is also hope and possibility.
There is also more that could be said. Leaving any place one has called home is no easy thing, but like Mr Seymour, a man who took full advantage of his expat lifestyle, Dr Seuss is an oracle for the wanderer. His famous line from “Oh The Places You’ll Go” is an appropriate end, and beginning to any journey. “You’re off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so ... get on your way!”
Richard Eaton has served Shanghai United International School as a teacher, building principal and group level executive. He will say goodbye to SUIS in July.
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