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If I take away culture, will I still care about growth? If I take away language, will I still want deep conversations? If I take away the environment, will I still choose challenge over comfort?

When I found myself in a different country, surrounded by a new language and unfamiliar rules, something felt different. I realised I wasn’t behaving the way I did back home. Often, my tone had shifted, my humor changed, and my style changed. It made me wondered which version of me is the real one?

Personally, I think I am: The values I keep choosing—self-growth, independence, and health. The reactions I have under pressure—staying calm, analyzing, confronting, and reflecting. The things that give me energy—exploring, learning new things, and taking good photos (moments). The questions I can’t stop asking—always wondering about what, why, and how. The direction I move in when no one is watching.

Paradoxically, the more cultures I experience, the more I am forced to strip away what was inherited. What remains is not nationality. It is chosen identity. And perhaps that is the most honest version of self — the one that survives every relocation.

Psychologists call this “self-concept clarity shift.”

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