By Patricio Pino
When I’m home, walking through the streets of Boston, my sense of belonging is unquestioned and also unenforced; it just exists. There’s a casual air, an indifference, a coldness between strangers that feel warm, a reassuring sense of being a local.
The sight of an outsider, a tourist, a new student always brings a strange flurry of just barely conscious thoughts. The tiniest of scoffs from the back of my head at someone using their phone to navigate, or a small desire to be asked for directions, secretly yearning whatever abstract kind of validation that would bring. Perhaps in a slightly cruel way, making me feel more at home in contrast to another or eliciting a similarly twisted sense of civic pride.
Regardless, now I am not at home, and I am no longer a local. The streets of London largely bring chaos a degree above the worst of what Boston can offer. Maybe it’s just the sense of smallness which a home city is sure to have, but overall, London presented a sense of scale and grandeur, fitting for global capital, for which I was wholly unprepared.
Arriving as a student, I was faced with the grinding and unpredictable process of getting used to a chaotic mess of new experiences: a walk to class along unfamiliar streets, a different academic culture, cars on the wrong side of the road. In short, I was now the outsider, frequently looking at my phone for directions and wandering around mildly confused.
This was to be expected since after all, I was a foreigner, and the task ahead of me was building up some sense of familiarity with the place which would be my home for the next few months. My previous ideas on belonging and familiarity were tested in carrying out this task, and I received introspective revelations from peculiar places.
For example, perhaps because of the high number of students in my area, many pedestrian crossings are helpfully adorned with pointers for which direction to look out for oncoming traffic. While helpful (and potentially life-saving), these quickly started to feel strangely mocking after the first few days.
I realized that I wanted to feel like a local again, I wanted to conceal my outsider status, I wanted to cross the street confidently and know where I was going unaided again. It’s a strange kind of selfish desire to blend in as a local and regain a sense of belonging which, in London, is entirely undeserved. I can walk with as much confidence as I want; the moment I open my mouth, it’s obvious I’m an American.
Nonetheless, I can frequently catch myself amid this kind of posturing, and I’m not entirely sure if it means anything significant. It feels good to be in the know; it feels good to be a local, whereas being a tourist or a foreigner brings a sense of interloping. To strive to remove insecurities and become intimately familiar with where you’re living is a natural urge, no matter the quirks and peculiarities it might bring along the way.
Now that I’ve been living in London for the greater part of the semester, I can say I feel fairly at home in the city, though still far from even remotely being considered a local. I proudly try to always walk on the left even though the city’s sheer chaos means it’s practically inevitable to always be in someone’s way. I will continue this effort to feel more at home in London until the semester ends, and leaving London, much of what I’ve learned and grown accustomed to will lose its pertinence.
But with my experience as an outsider in London as a foil, I’ve gained a new perspective to look at my experiences back home. At the sight of an outsider, I can now adopt a decidedly sympathetic approach, having once been in their shoes. I can now recognize a struggle towards a sense of belonging as something perhaps inherently human and adopt a more welcoming worldview as a result.
Most importantly, this new perspective can help me further cherish the places I consider home. I have a greater awareness of how hard it is to feel at home truly, how long and confusing of a struggle it can be to attain a sense of belonging and how important and significant it sometimes seems to succeed in fitting in and not sticking out as an outsider. With these new perspectives, I’m confident that when I return home, I’ll be able to look at my city and the people around me in a different, brighter light.
