ArcaNuova · Emigration · Calabria · Thinking
Clearing Out Narratives and Understanding Foreign Logics
Emigration also means examining the mental household. Some beliefs were once right and still no longer fit the new reality.
Emigrating does not only mean changing where you live. It means putting your entire mental household on the table and deciding what comes with you and what should remain in the old life. Many people fail not because of the sun, the language or the bureaucracy, but because of the narratives they carry from home without ever examining them.
A classic example is the market. In Germany, a market is almost always more expensive than a shop. The stalls are rarely run by farmers; they are usually middlemen selling especially fresh produce at especially high prices. With that story in my head, I avoided the market in southern Italy for years. Then one day I went, and suddenly everything was fresher, more honest and considerably cheaper. Because the people standing there really were farmers selling what was ripe at that moment. No show. No designer stalls. No Munich Viktualienmarkt prices. Just reality.
This example shows that many beliefs we bring with us are not wrong. They are simply no longer valid. They fit the old world, not the new one. That is why everything, truly everything, has to be checked again. This does not mean doubting everything forever. It means asking consciously, once: Does this thought still apply here? Does this story help me, or does it hold me back?
The work consists of sorting the old sentences in one’s head. Some remain because they are useful. Some go because they no longer have anything to do with reality. Others are expanded because the new surroundings reveal more possibilities than the old ones did. The result is not arbitrariness, but a new foundation that actually carries weight.
A second mistake belongs to these mental narratives: many emigrants immediately question unfamiliar rituals, and they do so entirely through German logic. A place such as southern Italy works differently. Not worse. Not more chaotically. Simply differently. Things that appear illogical to Germans are entirely natural and internally coherent to the people who live here.
Examples are everywhere. Why do ten people talk when one person could complete the task? Why does nobody do anything immediately, yet everything somehow works in the end? Why does a farmer talk for three hours before selling a lemon? Why is fruit more expensive in shops than at the market, and why is nobody trying to cheat you even when it looks that way to a German? These are not curiosities. They are the result of culture, a sense of time, tradition and community.
Anyone who immediately asks, “Why do you do it like that?” commits a cultural mistake. It does not sound curious. It sounds intrusive. Without intending to, it says: “We do it better in Germany.” That is a subtle insult, and nobody here particularly enjoys it. The better route has three stages: first observe, then understand, and only at the very end decide whether to adopt it.
Strange rituals are rarely strange. They are merely old, or they arose from a context one does not yet know. Watch long enough and the supposed chaos suddenly reveals its elegance, while the supposed improvisation proves remarkably stable. That is the essence of emigration: not merely moving the furniture, but moving one’s thoughts as well. Everything brought from the old mental apartment should be sorted thoroughly before it is arranged again in the new life.
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