[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, this is Joseph.
The podcast team is off this month for our summer break, but we'll be back in September with the first episode of season six. We have exciting things in store. New members of the podcast team.
In the meantime, we'd like to replay episode 20, what makes a home a home.
I love the stories in this episode. For example, Zaina Matar, who shares her experience of loving and losing her family home in Lebanon. I think a lot of listeners will really relate to this episode.
And one other thing before we get started, if you like this podcast, you will love Jii's new and updated masterclass, the Deep Culture Approach Masterclass series.
It focuses on the psychology of intercultural understanding. I will be facilitating with Ishita Rai. We'd love to have you join. It starts in November, but space is limited.
Check it out. Search for the Japan Intercultural Institute masterclass.
Okay, let's get to the episode.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: It hurts you so deeply that something happens, I don't know, in your mind or unconsciously or subconsciously or whatever that you say. I will not get attached anymore to somewhere or something, or in such a way that I will be hurt again.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: Hello, this is Joseph Scholz, and welcome to the Deep Culture podcast, where we explore culture and the science of mind. And I'm here with this episode's co host, Ishita Ray. Ishita, where are you now?
[00:01:49] Speaker C: Hi, Joseph. As we speak, I find myself in the city of Lucknow in India.
So I'm in my home country, but not in my hometown. And where are you?
[00:01:59] Speaker A: I am in Tokyo at the moment.
[00:02:01] Speaker C: You recorded the last two episodes from California, but now you're back in Japan.
So are you back home?
[00:02:09] Speaker A: I was raised in California, so that's my home originally. But now I've lived in Tokyo for a long, long time.
[00:02:15] Speaker C: And you feel at home there?
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Well, yes, I do. Although, you know, the idea of home is a bit complicated.
Actually, it reminds me of a sign in the arrivals area of the Tokyo airport. It's written in English and Japanese side by side. And in English, it says welcome to Japan.
And then in Japanese, it says okarinasai, which means welcome home.
[00:02:41] Speaker C: So the people who can read the sign in Japanese are assumed to be Japanese, but anyone reading the English sign must be an outsider.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I suppose that's the assumption. Of course, I can read both signs. So I'm both an outsider, but I'm also coming home.
Well, how is it for you, Ishita?
[00:03:03] Speaker C: Well, I started with a very clear feeling about home. I am from West Bengal in India.
But then I had to Learn to feel at home in different parts of India, each with its own distinct flavor. And then abroad in France and working and traveling internationally.
And then when I came back to my hometown, Durgapur, it was my home. But it also felt different, even alien in some ways.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: In what way?
[00:03:33] Speaker C: Well, for example, I learned to feel at home having coffee served with a piece of chocolate on a sidewalk cafe in Paris.
But then back in India, I was having tea from a clay cup at a roadside stand.
My Indian self, well, my Bengali self, felt far away from the me in France.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: You know, I think that's something that a lot of cultural bridge people struggle with, this question of home. You know, as you, you leave home or you find a new home or you miss home, or you have to learn to feel at home in different places.
[00:04:10] Speaker C: I think that's an important point, the feeling of being at home.
In the end, home is not simply a place, it's a feeling. And for cultural bridge people, it can be a complicated feeling.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: So in this episode, let's dig into this complication with just a basic question of what makes a home a home.
[00:04:35] Speaker C: We will hear from podcast contributor Zaina Matar about her experience of losing a home due to war and how she has created new homes for herself.
[00:04:45] Speaker A: And we'll look at what some theory and research can teach us about this human need for home.
[00:04:51] Speaker C: Which brings us to part one. The bridge person dilemma.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Right. So home is not just a place. It's a way of talking about our origin, a sense of who we are or where we feel that we belong. And this brings us to the bridge person dilemma. Well, there's this fundamental dilemma for people who move between different cultural worlds. We can lose our sense of home or even our sense of who we are.
[00:05:26] Speaker C: I know this is something that people who grow up moving between different places often experience, perhaps especially what are sometimes called third culture kids or TCKs.
So imagine, for example, someone whose parents are American, but whose work involves moving from one country to another.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: So although the children's passport may be American, they may spend, you know, three years in Saudi Arabia, then two years in Singapore and five years in Kenya.
And so this child is constantly forming new attachments and yet having to leave others behind.
[00:06:06] Speaker C: And this gives rise to the bridge person's dilemma. As we experience a new place, we get this growing sense of familiarity, of at homeness.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: But as we create new connections, it can also create a feeling of separation from where we were before.
Well, I teach a lot of international students and a lot of third culture kids. They live in different countries, they switch between different languages. I remember one of them described herself as a chameleon, just blending in wherever she goes.
[00:06:39] Speaker C: That sounds kind of cool. I guess.
Very international.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Yes, but you know, psychologically it can be very tough, all this change and adaptation.
And it's hard to answer this question, where is home?
[00:06:53] Speaker C: And there is research about the psychological challenges of being a third culture kid. One article, for example, describes them as lacking emplacement in which to root their identity.
[00:07:06] Speaker A: And so, in other words, they don't have a single place that feels connected to their sense of self, no single place that they feel that they really belong.
And that can lead to adjustment challenges. So, for example, I found this blog post talking about this.
Born into one culture, raised among others, her identity is most closely aligned with others raised like her. Moving internationally, she is not from anywhere.
Although she was born here, for her, this country is another foreign assignment.
Feeling out of place is only the tip of the iceberg.
She is struggling through yet another adaptation, another culture shock, another free fall.
[00:08:04] Speaker C: This article goes on to say that third culture kids feel at home with other third culture kids.
Their home is not a place.
It's the people who have shared their experience.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Unfortunately, that can also make it difficult to feel settled, to find a place to feel attached to, like a place to call home.
[00:08:25] Speaker C: It speaks to a very powerful human urge to feel connected, to feel secure in the place that we are and the people that we are close to.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: And there's another important point. When you and I left home and went off to see the world, it was by our own choice. And I think it's very different when you don't have a choice.
[00:08:46] Speaker C: True third culture kids, for example, didn't ask to move around. They simply had to change schools, make new friends, live in new houses.
And that lack of choice means that they may protect themselves psychologically by avoiding attachment to any place. They end up feeling that nowhere is home.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: Well, this issue of third culture kids is really deep. We could do a whole episode on this.
[00:09:14] Speaker C: I agree. But for this episode, we need to talk about another group of people that also face huge psychological challenges.
People who didn't choose to leave home, but were forced to leave.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Recently, we've seen that millions of people have been forced from their homes in Ukraine due to the war there. And again, there are many, many other people who have to leave their homes for other reasons, like natural disasters or violence, or even just a lack of economic opportunity.
[00:09:42] Speaker C: And the numbers are enormous.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimates that there are more than 80 million displaced people in the world, with more than 30 million displaced internationally.
This is a much bigger topic than we can cover here.
But there is someone on the podcast team who can share her experience of both losing a home because of war and talk about how to go about creating a new sense of home.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: So we've asked Zaina Matar from our podcast team to share her experiences with us, and maybe she can help us understand what we need to do to find a home when we've lost one.
[00:10:25] Speaker C: And that brings us to part two, Home, loss and love.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: I was born in Beirut in Lebanon and in 1958, and I had a very, very nice childhood, loving family, beautiful surroundings, and the thing to come immediately to what I call home, it is in fact a place in my head that is still in my head. And it is the house where we used to go every summer in the mountains for three months.
And for me this was the personification of what home is. And this came to a very abrupt end in 1975 when the so called civil war broke out in Lebanon and we were not able to go back to this house. Beirut was divided in two parts and so we were on one part and our Beirut home was on the other side. You could not come back to your home because of sniping and so on, so forth. And I remember lying in bed the whole day being sick and my mother coming to me and telling me it's because we, we gave up the house. And I said yes.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: You know, we sometimes talk about being homesick when we're away and when we miss our home. But in this case Zeina was quite literally sick from losing her home.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: Zeina goes on to say that she originally wanted to study in France, but just didn't feel ready to leave home.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: So after this I could not pass my baccalaureate because of the war, basically.
So I went to France, France and I wanted to study art history.
Then I passed an exam and I could have been taken as a student there. And my father happened to be in London on business and very spontaneously I called him and I said, come and pick me up, I want to go back.
We went back to Beirut, had again to go through that divided city. And I registered at AUB at the American University of Beirut and started my course of studies there and was studying Islamic art and archeology.
And during that time I used to go and do some archeological digs in Syria. It was during one of those digs that I met an American professor from New York University and he had a group of students and they were touring the Middle east, and we had a conversation. And he said, well, would you like to come and do a PhD at New York University?
I kind of thought, why not? And I did go to NYU on an assistantship, and I loved it. I mean, it was a great experience. And I felt home also because I was sent to an Italian kindergarten, I was sent to a French school, and then to the American University. So I knew the system. I knew how things worked out. And I think this is one of the main things. If you want to call a place home and feel at home in it, you need to be able to navigate the system.
[00:14:14] Speaker C: I like what she says about being able to navigate the system.
When we were doing the brainstorming with the podcast team for this episode, Daniel described this feeling as being able to find things in the dark.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: Zaina had found a new home, but at the same time, it was getting harder for her to return to her home in Lebanon.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: And in the meantime, things were also getting worse in Lebanon than there was 1982. I went in summer, and there was the siege of Beirut. We were in Beirut, and was this feeling of guilt going back. And my parents had said from the beginning, no matter what happens, we are not going anywhere. I mean, they sent us away, my brother and me, but they said, no way. And my father died in Lebanon. He never wanted to leave.
So it was with a lot of guilt feelings that I went back to New York. I was torn because you feel you are going further and further and further away from what was your home.
The main thing that I need to call at home is who are the people who are in my life?
So my family was always very, very important to me. And I knew that no matter how much in shambles Lebanon was, I would be able to go back to my parents anytime. So family is part of what I call home.
No matter the geographical distance, this is unimportant.
And I had been, in the meantime, also in Germany to do some research on my dissertation. And in that time, the professor who was there told me, do you want to come back on a position here? So I said to him, sure, I come back.
And this is what happened. And I stayed and I met my present husband and have the family. So is Germany my home now? Yeah, sure, it is my home, but I do not think of Germany as being my home forever. For example, I don't think of these things. I don't think of the building a big house where I would sit in for the rest of my life.
No, this is very, very Alien to me. And I think it did come through this experience of war.
It hurts you so deeply that something happens, I don't know, in your mind or unconsciously or subconsciously or whatever that you say. I will not get attached anymore to somewhere or something or in such a way that I will be hurt again.
Sometimes I find myself very looking at things in a very cold, cold manner. But I guess it is also part of surviving things, of wanting to, you know, to go on.
I have a very, very close friend from that time. And we always say that was the best time of our life, basically being in these mountains and living these years like this.
So there is a hole, but life continues, and it can be good. I'm happy with my life.
I wanted my children not to be torn between cultures.
I knew they're going to live in Germany.
There's no way that we will go to Lebanon to live.
So I brought them what I could bring them of the culture. I mean, we used to go every summer and spend time with my brother's family at the beach with my parents. And the relationships are very strong, and they're there. But the physical Lebanon, I did not want them to experience this too much.
And this is my problem. It's not their problem. I don't want them to be in the midst of it. I feel that I can deal with it because I know it, but they don't know it enough, and I don't want to be responsible for them.
I think you are always a little bit edgy.
Our children are not edgy. My husband is not edgy. You know, they are here, they are comfortable. I am always a little bit edgy. I mean, I know where my papers are if I want to. If I have to leave quickly.
So this uncertainty, this being always a little bit jumpy, also gives you strength, because what is the alternative to doing this?
I believe honestly, strongly that every person can find the strength to get over the challenges. But maybe my challenges were not as great as other people. You know, I did not lose anybody in the war once. My brother almost got killed. Yes. And the things that marked me a lot was more looking at my mother, you know, sitting on a chair and having only tears going down and saying, my son, my son, my son. And when he appeared, you know, these are things that really are very strong in my memory when I bring them up again. I was lucky. So I cannot say every person who left or has been forced to leave or can react like this, I feel a deep, deep, deep, deep sadness. This is anger. But my Anger has accompanied me all my life because of this corrupt elite. And when I sit on my mother's terrace and I look, you know, at Beirut, I feel it is such a beautiful country with so many resources and destruction.
So very, again, very ambiguous feelings. I have strong feelings. Very strong.
Yes, Yes.
I wish I could be indifferent in certain things. That would make things easier.
I've given up wanting to resolve anything, actually. Maybe sometimes it's better to let go than trying, trying, Trying to resolve. Just let go and simply accept the fact that it is like this. And then how do I go on with my life to make it a.
[00:21:37] Speaker C: When I first heard her story, I was struck by just how deep her love of home is, her love for Lebanon, her love for her family.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: It really touches upon something that is so human, our capacity or our need to feel connected to the things that we know and love.
[00:21:58] Speaker C: And this need is something that brain and mind, science can teach us something about.
Which brings us to part three.
Conrad and his Gheeze.
So, Joseph, we've heard this moving account of Zaina's. It makes me wonder what research or theory can possibly teach us.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: Well, nothing as moving as Zana's story. But we can learn that other people have faced similar experiences. And sometimes learning some terminology or some theory can really help us make sense of our own experiences.
[00:22:40] Speaker C: The term that comes to mind for me is marginality.
As I recall, Janet and Milton Bennett both talk about feelings of marginality as a side effect of increased intercultural sensitivity.
Basically, as we learn to navigate in different cultural worlds, we start to feel like we don't quite belong. We are on the edge, on the margin.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: And of course, the word marginal can sound negative. But Milton Bennett is talking about marginality as a kind of possible positive outcome as well.
[00:23:17] Speaker C: Yes, he's talking about the ways in which participating in different communities allows us to shift between different ways of perceiving the world, changing our cultural glasses, as it were.
So marginality develops as part of our ability to look at a given situation from different cultural perspectives. We can feel like we don't fully belong because we always have these other competing points of view.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think this happens to third culture kids. You know, if you move from country to country, you learn to see things from different perspectives. But that also means that your way of looking at things will always be somehow different from the local perspective.
[00:24:01] Speaker C: And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the term constructive marginality is sometimes used to look at marginality in a positive way.
In fact, the act of adapting and seeing things in different ways feels positive, sometimes even like a superpower.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: I like that. A superpower, because you see things that other people don't see.
Well, Milton Bennett puts it in kind of dramatic terms by saying constructive marginality is the experience of oneself as a constant creator of one's reality.
[00:24:54] Speaker C: As we navigate through different cultural worlds, we are, in effect, constructing our own reality using these different perspectives.
That is deep.
But of course, not everyone experiences this in that way. Some people may feel inauthentic or some kind of emptiness or lack of sincerity.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: And Janet Bennett uses the term encapsulated marginality to refer to that feeling of being stuck between different cultural worlds, kind of trapped between them, rather than integrating them into a larger whole.
[00:25:32] Speaker C: You know, I am fascinated by this terminology, but terms like encapsulated marginality and constructive marginality seem rather abstract to me. When I hear Zaina's story, it strikes me that her attempts to find a home are deeply emotional.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: Humans are not just kind of perceiving machines, analyzing different cultural worlds. The way that we experience our identity or our home, it's not just in our mind, it's in our body.
[00:26:03] Speaker C: You know what's funny? When I think about how attached we can be to home, it reminds me of the famous experiment where geese were following the researcher around like he was their mother.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: Oh, yes, Conrad Lawrence. He showed that baby geese, when they're first hatched, will start following the first moving object they see, and they will continue to do so throughout their lives. And even if that first moving object is a goat or a researcher or a choo choo train or whatever, it.
[00:26:35] Speaker C: Makes sense, because in the wild, the first moving object they are likely to see will be their mother. Which is why we see ducks and geese with a string of babies strung along behind.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: I mean, it is a bit of a strange comparison, but I do see your point. Because just as geese are imprinted by their experiences early in life, humans are deeply affected by our early experiences, too. Like, nothing ever tastes as good as your favorite dish as a child.
And it feels so natural to speak our native language.
And the music that we listen to as a child makes our body move for the rest of our lives.
[00:27:20] Speaker C: That is true, but I feel like we are getting pretty far away from our original topic, the feeling of home and how we can make a home and feel at home.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: What I've taken away from Zaina's story is that home is about caring.
[00:27:37] Speaker C: That is my takeaway, too. We create a feeling of home by investing ourselves by caring about people. Like Zaina with her family and about the places that we live.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: And so having different homes can make us feel detached, like we don't belong.
But by caring about the people and the places in our lives, we can develop this sense of home. And I think we can make a conscious choice to care.
[00:28:05] Speaker C: How about you, Joseph? What about your sense of home? You've lived in Japan for so many years.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: You know, I've talked about this on another episode, but I do feel at home in Japan. But it's not because I'm accepted as a Japanese person would be. I'm always a foreigner here.
But I am comfortable in my role as a highly adapted outsider. I'm navigating as this inside outsider. And I do care. I care about my neighborhood, my friends, my students.
You know, the couple down the street that runs the bread store.
[00:28:40] Speaker C: Well, on that delicious note, I think we do need to end here.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: Well, I'm afraid you're right.
But before we do that, we should mention some of the references from today's episode. We talked about the article International Schools and Third Culture Kids Identity Development A Qualitative Multi Case Study. And that is by Jacob Daniel Hough.
And we mentioned a blog post by Nina the Trouble with Third Culture Kids. And we found that on the Children's Mental Health Network website, we talked about encapsulated marginality. You can find that in Janet Bennett's chapter Cultural Marginality Identity Issues in Intercultural Training. And that is in the book Education for the Intercultural Experience.
And also in the same book is Milton Bennett's Towards Ethnore A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity, where he also talks about marginality.
The Deep Culture podcast is sponsored by the Japan Intercultural Institute, an NPO dedicated to intercultural education and research.
I'm the director of jii and members of JII can join our learning circle where intercultural educators share best practices. And you can see both Ishita and I there. To find out more, just do a web search for the Japan Intercultural Institute. And if you liked today's episode, we'd really like to hear from you. You can write
[email protected] A special thanks to Zaina Matar for sharing her story with us today. Thanks to our sound engineer, Robinson Fritz, our podcast team members Yvonne van der Poel and Danielle Glintz, and everyone at ji.
And thanks to you, Ishta, so much for sharing this time with me.
[00:30:35] Speaker C: Thank you, Joseph, for making me feel at home.
