What is the value? Whenever I go back home I of course am happy to see old friends and family. But I'm also reminded of all the reasons I'm glad I left, from poorer economic opportunities to poor political decisions manifesting themselves in everyday life.
In the spirit of taking surprising statements at face value, here are some examples.
- Having a kid? Now your whole extended family is available to give you help and advice, to babysit, to be there for you when you need them.
- Need a job? It's a lot easier to find one when you have a personal network in a place already.
- Something terrible happen in your life? You now have a built in set of folks to help you through it.
There's incredible value in having a large local support group. Yes, it's possible to compensate for the lack of it with friends, and those of us who have moved far from home tend to do that, but that's a pretty straightforward second best compared to being with family, people you've grown up with, etc.
So we can all appreciate what immigrants that leave their country in search of a better life in a distant place make.
Being able to and wise enough to move, is a survival instinct that all living things have.
Easier said than done when one's entire social structure is rooted in one place, and has been since before one was born.
We forget how lucky we are that we can do our work from anywhere in the world; those of us who've moved around also tend, I think, to forget the real value of staying where one grew up.