Inside The University of Melbourne

I often wonder how adaptable a person can be.

How would they survive if they were taken from the creature comforts of their home city, and dropped into an environment where they didn’t know a word of the local language or a single soul.

How would they react?

Would they whinge and put down everything around them and miss home.

Or would they adapt, put their head down and observe, learn words daily and begin to adapt to the cultural norms.

In reality, most people go through phases of culture shock but the people who are of a higher calibre learn to adapt. They don’t sit around playing Pokemon Go until the odd hours of the night, instead they improve themselves through acquiring knowledge or skills.

You see, people often take the path of least resistance. They are unwilling to step outside of their comfort zone. This could mean never leaving Melbourne besides the annual trip to Bali or Japan. Or Never trying to enter a new field. The list can go on.

But what truly sets the brilliant apart from the average is their ability to adapt.

I’ve noticed it where I live now. The people who are transient in their base but are a calibre above the average are much more in-tune with their surroundings. They adapt so well that they go much further than the hooligan that looks totally misplaced in their behaviour, not just their appearance.

Sure, leaving the west is great, and I am sure many more people who were established back home will take the plunge, but once you do leave, you cannot simply live abroad with the same attitudes and behaviours that you have developed back home.

I for one can totally tell the level that I have changed myself over the years. The bitterness of being in a place where I couldn’t agree or accept its values just made me unhappy. That doesn’t happen anymore.

..but there are other challenges.

The challenge of “Belonging”.

Some societies, you simply wont ever belong regardless of how long you live there.

You’ll always be viewed as different.

Countries that are against Mass-migration and protect their borders and cultures through a largely homogeneous racial profile in its population, will rarely view someone as their own based purely on their foreign appearance.

This is just something you’ll have to accept.

It has its pros and cons but the pros definitely out shine the pain of living back home.

This is something that most never really think of when they are hoping to set up life abroad, it just comes after a while of living in a different society.