I wonder if you really could preserve your unique national features that reflect what you are as a grown person who came from another country with different traditions, customs, holidays, and way of life?
You emerge from all of that into a different lifestyle, different traditions, and customs. And there is no way around that. Either you have to embrace all new stuff into your every day life or just live like an outcast, hermit, oddity, laughable and pitiful, clinging desperately to your local diaspora of people with same language and cultural origin and way of life or misunderstanding and denying all sense of their new way of life.
It is especially hard to the people of 50+ when age becomes a barrier together with the new language that they do not know. Without a cultural support they might fall into depression and feel like they are useless and worthless. They desperately need to find some place of their own in this new life where they do feel more comfortable and more at home.
It's easer when they have a support of their grown up children but what if not? If they do not have children, don’t know the language, they cannot find a job; they have to survive on a miserable social assistance (if any) and cannot get over language and cultural block.
Everything about your health and well being depends on how you feel. If you are busy with some meaningful occupation, you might not have enough time to feel lost and miserable or worthless. And everybody knows now that’s easer to keep physical health if your emotions are good.
It took me many years to stop feeling nostalgic and sad. I realized that even in a different culture I could find something that I might accept and like. For example things like Christmas and Halloween. Like window-shopping in a big mall. Or trip to the beach on a hot summer day. New traditions and new friends.
Part of me became different but part of me still the same. I still like the same things I loved in my old country, every morning I see the same face in the mirror (just a little bit older and wiser (I hope). But I know I have a taste for new things, I did not have before.
New books, movies, experience, I wouldnever have had in my old country. That’s what life is about and I accept that.
But I see how difficult it is for people who came here really old, at retirement age, may be being retired in their old country.
Yesterday I was passing by a grocery store around 8 o’clock in the morning. It was Sunday, the store was still closed, just about to be opened, but there was a small crowd of old immigrant people speaking Russian, standing there with big shopping bags, waiting for the store to open. Believe me, there is absolutely no necessity to do that on a nice sunny day, on Sunday, not in this country. There is no shortage or deficit of groceries in Toronto! But these people are so used to deficit and shortage in their old country, that they are afraid of doing otherwise.
They think that they might miss some products if they come later. They keep their life style even if there is no sense in it in this country. They do not even see any possibility for them here in their advanced age unable to notice that in this country their life could be completely different – at any age.
You just have to loose what I call the mentality of a Martian. When you think that either: they are idiots, I do not want to now their stupid language and culture (they do not have any) or: I am too old and stupid, do not have any memory, cannot learn anything etc., etc. In both cases it’s not true.
Of course to learn something new requires tremendous effort at any age. And the older you are the harder it is to change everything you are used and accustomed to and learn something completely new. But not impossible. And it’s worth it.
The new experience you’ll get and new possibilities, you’ll see are priceless. Well worth the fight. Even if you are fighting the same old... yourself. Please, believe me, you are not a Martian, it's the same planet Earth and we are all the same earthlings here though a little bit different here and there.
You emerge from all of that into a different lifestyle, different traditions, and customs. And there is no way around that. Either you have to embrace all new stuff into your every day life or just live like an outcast, hermit, oddity, laughable and pitiful, clinging desperately to your local diaspora of people with same language and cultural origin and way of life or misunderstanding and denying all sense of their new way of life.
It is especially hard to the people of 50+ when age becomes a barrier together with the new language that they do not know. Without a cultural support they might fall into depression and feel like they are useless and worthless. They desperately need to find some place of their own in this new life where they do feel more comfortable and more at home.
It's easer when they have a support of their grown up children but what if not? If they do not have children, don’t know the language, they cannot find a job; they have to survive on a miserable social assistance (if any) and cannot get over language and cultural block.
Everything about your health and well being depends on how you feel. If you are busy with some meaningful occupation, you might not have enough time to feel lost and miserable or worthless. And everybody knows now that’s easer to keep physical health if your emotions are good.
It took me many years to stop feeling nostalgic and sad. I realized that even in a different culture I could find something that I might accept and like. For example things like Christmas and Halloween. Like window-shopping in a big mall. Or trip to the beach on a hot summer day. New traditions and new friends.
Part of me became different but part of me still the same. I still like the same things I loved in my old country, every morning I see the same face in the mirror (just a little bit older and wiser (I hope). But I know I have a taste for new things, I did not have before.
New books, movies, experience, I wouldnever have had in my old country. That’s what life is about and I accept that.
But I see how difficult it is for people who came here really old, at retirement age, may be being retired in their old country.
Yesterday I was passing by a grocery store around 8 o’clock in the morning. It was Sunday, the store was still closed, just about to be opened, but there was a small crowd of old immigrant people speaking Russian, standing there with big shopping bags, waiting for the store to open. Believe me, there is absolutely no necessity to do that on a nice sunny day, on Sunday, not in this country. There is no shortage or deficit of groceries in Toronto! But these people are so used to deficit and shortage in their old country, that they are afraid of doing otherwise.
They think that they might miss some products if they come later. They keep their life style even if there is no sense in it in this country. They do not even see any possibility for them here in their advanced age unable to notice that in this country their life could be completely different – at any age.
You just have to loose what I call the mentality of a Martian. When you think that either: they are idiots, I do not want to now their stupid language and culture (they do not have any) or: I am too old and stupid, do not have any memory, cannot learn anything etc., etc. In both cases it’s not true.
Of course to learn something new requires tremendous effort at any age. And the older you are the harder it is to change everything you are used and accustomed to and learn something completely new. But not impossible. And it’s worth it.
The new experience you’ll get and new possibilities, you’ll see are priceless. Well worth the fight. Even if you are fighting the same old... yourself. Please, believe me, you are not a Martian, it's the same planet Earth and we are all the same earthlings here though a little bit different here and there.
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