Like I Said, It's All About the Amplitude

My brother Jeff and his wife live in Germany. They moved there in August 2005 for Jeff to take a new job within Adidas at their world headquarters in Nuremberg. In the last year, the two of them have gone through quite an experience moving out of the US and transitioning into a foreign country. Blythe often writes about it on her blog.

Wait—this is starting to sound familiar. Ok, ok—I clearly got the idea of starting my blog from Blythe. We were both English majors—we're used to "borrowing liberally".

Earlier today, Blythe made a post to her blog ("Anniversary") that really hit home for me. As a result, I'd like to "borrow liberally" again (Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Right.) and expound upon my feelings on the same topic. Thanks Blythe. I owe you two ideas for blog postings now. Or maybe just one of those smoothies you like so much from Starbucks.

So living abroad—what's it really like? Well, in our post-blog conversation, Blythe put it best: "Sometimes the hardest part isn't living abroad—it's admitting to people that living abroad isn't always as glamorous as it seems."

Or as I like to put it—it's all about the amplitude. (What is amplitude?)



When you live abroad (or really, take on any new challenge in life), the amplitude of your every day experiences increases dramatically. You go from a life with a relatively low amplitude to a life with high amplitude. You go from a life that is more "hum drum" (not in a bad way, it's just consistently consistent) to a life that is full of very low lows and very high highs.

The hard thing is determining whether or not the net yield of the low-lows plus the high-highs equals the net yield of hum-drum.

Life for Me in the States
+1 + -1 = 0

Life for Me Abroad
+5 + -5 = 0

But the funny thing is, the human mind and spirit doesn't work that way. Even though the net yield is still 0, you are not the same after the experiences.

My Conclusion: Living abroad is a good thing to do—for a defined period of time. Not your whole life. And if you have defined that period of time in your own mind (1 year? 3 years? 5 years?), it makes it that much easier to get through the low times because you know it is not forever and you are—temporarily—trading those low times for the high times.

PS—As I finished writing this, I just looked out my office at home to find a huge spider walking across the hall. This proves my earlier point. Needless to say, he is no longer with us.