Faking It
When I moved to England for university, one of my goals was to acquire an English accent—primarily because I admired the culture, but also to control whether or not I was identified as American. I started faking it almost as soon as I got there (as crazy as that sounds) because I knew that if I met people using my American accent, trying to switch later would be awkward. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, nor how much it would teach me about myself.
Like most missionary kids, I have always had mixed feelings about my passport country. I enjoyed the one year in every five that my family spent ‘back’ in Kansas—the things I never could’ve done in Tokyo (like four-wheeling), the friends I made (even if some did ask if there were bicycles in Japan). But I also held an extreme dislike of ‘America’ as a concept, though I struggled to express it in terms beyond the usual stereotypes. Later, when asked why I didn’t stay in the US beyond one year of Bible college, I said, “It was strange to have everything outside of me saying that I belonged, and everything inside of me saying I didn’t.” But this didn’t quite capture it either.
It was only after several months in England that I began to realize it wasn’t America or even being American that I hated. It was people identifying me as a ‘typical American,’ and all that implied and denied about me, even if only as a first impression. As an MK in Japan I’d built my self-image on being both special and acculturated wherever I went. Getting the same questions repeatedly was fine, because the alternative, being unremarkable, was unbearable. I started to see my prideful attitude, and how I lived on the opinions of others. I saw how I submitted to the very stereotypes I hated, and as I did so, forfeited opportunities to counteract those stereotypes. Furthermore, not only were all my attempts to be ‘cool’ in the Japanese sense useless anywhere else, I found I didn’t want to be completely English, either—I discovered American parts of me that I liked.
If this were just about nationality, it wouldn’t be that important, because—as TCKs might know best—nationality isn’t identity, and it certainly isn’t destiny. But for one whose identity is in Christ, nationality is a God-given tool to serve him, so what seems like a hindrance could in fact be the very best tool for the job. Sometimes it takes going somewhere new to learn about where you were, and pretending to be something else to see what you actually are, and want to be.
Moving to a third country helped me to see that my binary view of the world didn’t even accommodate my own self-perception very well. I’d recommend it, though not my exact method—three years into what I thought would be a few month’s experiment, I’m stuck with no exit strategy. If anyone I know in Europe reads this, I’m in trouble.
Photo by Roddy Mackay (OMF)