Living Here: Successful Expatriates Do This

I passed a small milestone pretty much unnoticed this week. In early July I completed six years of living full time in Mexico. I have never been one to make a big deal out of anniversaries, so I didn't even mark the day. However I recently visited Alaska, my birthplace and the lifelong home I departed from to begin a new life in Mérida, and that has prompted me to reflect on the transition.

Mine's been a successful venture, in all categories. I am happy I moved, feel invigorated in late middle age by a new way of life, and do not seriously think about moving permanently back up north.

However I have seen others move to Mexico, full of excitement and hope, only to experience disillusion and disappointment. Some try it for a year or two before deciding to move back to where they came from. Others stay, but adapt by cocooning themselves within a small crowd of other expats, their air conditioning and their cable TV and live isolated from much of the beauty of life here. Some also mix in booze, drugs, and obsessive sexual behavior.

Although living as an expatriate in Mexico proves difficult for some, in many of the others who remain, it brings out their best.

There is something particular, or maybe peculiar, about the foreigners who move here, find community, stay and are truly happy. There are those who find themselves happier than they have ever been, their lives blossoming as they meet the challenge of exploring new relationships, places, ideas and interests.

I've thought a lot about why my move was successful, and taken a look at other happy and successful foreigners living in Mexico. Obviously, for each of these their move goes well for individual reasons. But there are more common threads than differences.

Happy expats who stay on for the long haul usually started out by doing their homework. Although no quantity of research and trial visits can fully prepare one for what it's like to live here all the time, these things certainly can assist with identifying obstacles and help with the decision-making process.

Successful transplants usually are flexible, open minded and have a sense of adventure. They don't expect things to be the same as they were where they came from, and accept, or better yet enjoy, the differences. They adjust to a slower rhythm of life. They appreciate new experiences and thrive on the challenge of figuring out an unfamiliar culture and living in a place where most people don't speak their language. Through it all they generally manage to remain positive. These are not the kind of people you hear talking excessively about how great things are "back home."

Patience is very important. It takes time to adjust to different ways of doing things, different food, weather, and really just about everything else. Most people go through an initial euphoric period, a time when everything is delightful, exciting and exotic. This often is followed by a period of reevaluation, when they find themselves confronting unanticipated difficulties, realize that a new country didn't make old problems go away, and feel homesick. At this point they may wonder if they made the right choice. Some manage to use this time as an opportunity for growth, but it usually takes a couple of years, and patience, to work it all out.

Finally, many successful expats break out of old patterns and reinvent themselves to some extent. I am not talking about people who are running from their past and try to create a fictitious self. The fractures in these fairy tales usually start to show pretty quickly. What I'm talking about are those who find themselves with time to do what they really want to do, things like volunteering to teach, support environmental causes or care for abandoned animals, pursuing new careers in art, writing or other fields, or opening a new business. Foreigners here usually feel a lot more freedom to experiment and try out new roles than they did where they came from. Moving to another country is a chance to forge a new identity by taking risks and accomplishing things they never had time to do before.

I think Babs, in the "about me" section of her blog, sums up perfectly the key attitude of many successful expats with a quote from Helen Keller: "Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all." Expatriates with this attitude have the time of their lives.

People: Goodbye, Neighbor, and Thanks

My neighbor Alejandro died last week. I was out of town when it happened, and busy away from the house when I got back, so I didn't get the news until several days later.

Alejandro and I were not close, but he was my first friend in the neighborhood after I moved into my house in Mèrida a few years ago. He was an outgoing, gregarious type, always waving and saying hello, and I guess it was just in his nature to be the first one to start a conversation with the new guy on the block.

Alejandro was not a young man, but with his unlined face and continual smile he was energetic and always busy, so I was more than a little surprised when he told me several years ago that he was 75 years old. I would have sworn he was no more than sixty, and he might have passed for younger. He'd lost his wife at a young age and remarried, and worked many years as a taxi driver. He remained happy in his second marriage and together with his wife Ingrid raised a houseful of children, who now have families of their own.

Alejandro was always busy with projects, such as painting and repairing old cars he would buy, fix up, drive for awhile, and then resell. He told me he liked to work, and the problem-solving and tinkering involved with the cars, along with the incentive of making a little extra cash when he sold them, kept his mind and body agile and gave him something interesting to do.

Not that his days were empty. Various children and grandchildren were usually around, and the modest house full of activity. One of the last times I saw him, a few weeks ago, Alejandro was delightedly painting the house next door, which they had rented so his daughter and her family could move in. People from the U.S. often don't understand why different generations of a family would want to live in such close proximity. Here, people can't fathom how people from el norte manage living so far apart from the company, affection and support of their closest loved ones.

Passing by on the street when Alejandro was outside working often entailed more than a casual "buenos dias." He loved to talk about what he was doing, and to find out what I was up to. I sometimes brought him my car and home maintenance problems for advice. The give and take usually ran on for awhile. It seemed as if the socializing for him was the main point of being out on the street, and that washing the car or fixing the tire was something he would get done but not particularly important in comparison.

Alejandro's family owns a ranch about an hour's drive outside of Mèrida, and many times he invited me to go with him for a couple of days and hang out. Unfortunately that's something we never did because I always had something else going on. I started thinking about that when another neighbor told me Alejandro had suddenly died of a heart attack earlier last week. One of the reasons I moved to Mexico was because I wanted to stop living in tomorrow (laboring on and on for that retirement, saving all year for that brief vacation, etc.) and start doing what I want to do now. I have gotten better at living in the now, but the fact that I had put off the ranch visit time and again until it was too late bothers me. I looked forward to that trip as much as I liked Alejandro; he was a nice guy and we probably could have been better friends. I take all this as another of those little messages that life sends us, if we only will pay attention to them, telling us maybe we need to make an in-course correction along the way. I am taking it seriously.

Once my train of thought got rolling along these lines, I started thinking about how happy and successful this neighbor had always seemed to me. He was not a wealthy man, in fact by many Americans' standards he would have been considered poor. Alejandro and his wife raised a large family in a small three-room (not three bedroom, three room) house, where they lived for at least forty years. He didn't have a lot of stuff. His thirty-year-old cars were worth at most a few hundred dollars, and sometimes were broken down. But he always, even when under a balky car and covered with sweat and grease, seemed to enjoy living in the present and have a good time.

I read not long ago that Mexicans have among the highest levels of personal happiness in the world. I think that Alejandro is a good example of some of the reasons for this. It looks to me as if my late neighbor's success in life boiled down to a few simple points. He liked to be happy, so he usually was. He had a good attitude and didn't let small irritations or things beyond his control ruin his day. He was completely authentic: he had no "image" to maintain. He enjoyed everything he did as best he could. He seemed to be more interested in relationships -- his family, friends, and neighbors -- than in things or schedules. I think these qualities gave meaning to the life of a humble and modest man, and filled it with affection and love.

There is an example and a message here.

Adios, vecino, y gracias.