Choose the Rollercoaster, Not the Highway!

I switched on my laptop today, determined to blog about something completely different, when I came across this article about the emotional highs and lows of expat life on the BBC website.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16408203  I especially liked one of the comments, that life at home is like cruising along the highway, while life abroad is almost always going to be a rollercoaster.   So I started wondering why some people choose the rollercoaster over the highway (or motorway, or freeway, or just any stretch of straight and relatively uncomplicated road).

They don't have a choice in the current economic climate.

That has always been true to a certain extent, although the pressure is usually more subtly exerted.  Of course,  an unresearched and unwanted assignment will be doomed to fail, especially if the family hate the move as well.  You cannot force people to get on a rollercoaster, knowing that they will get violently sick.  Especially when your well of bribery (generous relocation packages, additional allowances, private health insurance, private schools etc.) is running dry. 

Still, for most people it continues to be sound career advice to garner some work experience abroad, even if your own company does not appreciate it as much upon repatriation as they initially promised they would.  It is an odd and expensive truth that many former expats are then snapped up by other companies for their global mindset and experience!

They are adrenaline junkies.

They are the adventurers and nomads of this world, the new pioneers (although that word, as well as 'settlers', has developed negative connotations now).  They are restless, always seeking out the big thrill.  After a short while, they get bored, their feet get itchy and they set off again to find the next challenge for themselves and their long-suffering families.  Again, certainly true of the fans of real rollercoaster, perhaps less so for those who move abroad, as your boredom threshold will be sorely tested when you commit to a new country for several years.  In my experience, those who can balance restlessness with patience, persistence and inner quiet are most likely to be successful and happy expats.

They are looking for something.

Well, ain't we all?  But I have heard psychologists speculate about how those who are really keen to move abroad are prey to the myth of 'starting a new life, with a clean slate'.  Perhaps they feel something is missing from their current life, that they have taken the wrong turn somewhere, made the wrong choices.  What a great opportunity to reinvent themselves, to run away from their problems, to simplify their lives!

Of course, in practice, for every story of someone who finds that idyllic farmhouse in Tuscany, the bucolic lifestyle, inner peace and lasting happiness, we hear five more horror stories of being ripped off, of endless bills and administrative errors, of broken hearts and just sheer boredom.  You cannot leave your own state of mind and character behind, and often the life you are seeking to redesign will fall back into its all-too-familiar and all-too-despised moulds.

So if they are not cynical career junkies, superficial thrill-seekers or naive idealists, what does motivate people to choose the rollercoaster?  And not just once, but possibly many times in life? Perhaps it is curiosity - the desire to know more, and to recognise and respect different ways of being.  In my own case, I do believe that in today's world you are at a serious disadvantage if you are only exposed to a single country, single ideology, single way of life.  It is this fear of chilling certainty and one-track mindedness, what one might call 'totalitarianism', that makes me choose the loops and twists, the highs and lows, every single time.