this morning. It is a timely thing to do.
Yesterday I was talking to someone who has decided to return "home" after living in Downunder for sixteen years. I had always had a suspicion that he wasn't really happy here. He went back "home" every year.
He came out here as a teenager. His parents migrated - and brought the family with them. This man and his siblings didn't want to come. They were all in their teens. It meant leaving behind everything they were familiar with, leaving their friends, their hopes and dreams of life in what they considered to be "their" country.
This man's brother went "home" about ten years ago. He has set up his own business and is, apparently, doing well. Their sister has married and lives in another country altogether. This man has an academic job to go to and is looking forward to being able to communicate more easily with his colleagues. They will now be in a similar time zone. He will also have much easier access to the resources he needs. No, not everything is available via the internet.
His parents are still living here. They are appalled and, it seems, angry that their children "for whom we gave up so much" are not staying. They say they are going to be "lonely" and that their children will not be there for them in their old age".
I've met his parents, indeed met them before I met this man. It worries him that they feel this way. He has talked to me about this before. He was offered another position almost three years ago and turned it down under pressure from his parents.
This time he has decided to go. He doesn't have a partner or children to consider.
"My parents say I am just being selfish - that I lack loyalty," he told me.
I am wondering who is being selfish - and what "loyalty" actually means in this case.
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When I was in my very early teens we were very close to becoming ten-pound-poms, until my Father discovered that he could not take his Civil Service pension entitlement with him.
We had quite a few relatives in Australia - Mum's Father was born in Mildura and at least two older brothers settled in Oz but it was not the people and familiar life that I couldn't bear to leave but the land itself - the rocks and bones of my true home. I'm so glad that idea didn't come about, or I think I would be one of those wandering ghosts, not knowing where to settle, because I had been ripped away from the land I belonged to and not found a new home.
There are good people everywhere, but land is not something you can carry with you.
I don't really understand family. How can it be that the point of children is an investment for your old age? But that is what it seems to be as a rule. And it is generally reciprocated. Children see parents as an investment - somewhere to live until they are 40, somebody to do their laundry, somebody to pay their mortgage when they do go that way. Somebody to babysit, and then at some point, the parents become too old to be of any economic benefit and we start talking euthanasia. It all seems a bit weird to me.
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