Tag: Saudade

The Gift of Saudade

Published on by Marilyn8 Comments

Saudade “A sense of home is, it seems, worth more than any other comfort. And one of the questions I want to answer now, for myself, is what makes a place feel like home. I know that it is not so simple as living where people speak your language and look like you and have lost what you have lost, but there is a kind of comfort in that, too” – Notes from No Man’s Land by Eula Biss page 128

As we returned to Cambridge yesterday after a long weekend away I felt a familiar longing. I turned to my husband and asked him if he felt like our home in Cambridge, was indeed ‘home’.

Because I don’t. Not always. Despite my work and church and friends and general life being here, the sense of ‘home’, of ‘belonging’ still seems to be just out of reach. I don’t feel this daily – I feel this when I return from being away. Because usually when I’ve been away, I realize no one knew I was gone.

Home is a place that when you return, people knew you were gone. They welcome you back. But in Cambridge, no one ever knows we’re gone. 

Almost two years ago I was introduced to the word ‘Saudade‘. I learned of the word from my husband, who in turn learned it from a Brazilian friend. I immediately came to love and rely on this word to express that peculiar longing that I never had words to express. I used it in writing. I used it in speaking. I particularly used it when connecting with immigrants and refugees through my job.

Saudade is described as “a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness.” – In Portugal of 1912, A. F. G. Bell

This is what I felt yesterday as we returned. Once again I had saudade. 

Ute Limacher, in a beautiful piece written for the series Painting Pictures, says that we can have ‘saudade’ for people, for places, and for moments. I’ve felt all three of these, sometimes all at the same time. 

I have come to realize that this saudade, this ‘indolent wistfulness’ will never be completely gone, and I’ve also come to be okay with this. It is a longing that nothing on this earth will ever fully meet. I have my moments of feeling completely at home, feeling like I belong, even as I ache for what I can no longer have, places I can no longer live, people I will no longer see. In a beautiful piece called “Saudade – a Song for the Modern Soul” Rachel Pieh Jones writes: “There is a peace and joy in belonging and an ache for what is not, for what can no longer be.”

As a Christian, perhaps the biggest mistake I could ever make is being too at home in this world, all my longings met, wrapped up in the temporal.

For beyond the reminders of worlds and lives past, saudade is the reminder of another world, another longing not yet realized. A reminder of a world where there will be no more sadness,where tears will be wiped from our eyes, where a lion and a lamb, earthly enemies, will lie down in peace.

So I’m coming to delight in this saudade, to recognize it for the gift that it is. I don’t want to fill it with something false, a shadow comfort of what is real. I want to live each day, accepting the inevitable saudade that comes — sometimes forcefully, sometimes quietly. C.S. Lewis says that if we “find in [ourselves] desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that [we] were made for another world.”*

In saudade I recognize that I was made for another world.

Today is a new day. I am back to a routine and grateful for this routine. I feel at home in my skin and surroundings, and it is all the more precious because of saudade.

What about you? Do you find yourself with longings that will never be met in this world? 

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A bit after I was introduced to ‘Saudade’, I wrote a piece called “Saudade – A Word for the Third Culture Kid”. I wrote it quickly one night, hoping that at least a few would relate with the word. I was overwhelmed by the gracious response to the post. Along with the reads and shares of the piece, the post was also picked up by Among Worlds – a publication of Interaction International, an organization for third culture kids. I continue to get comments and emails about it, connecting me to people I would never have met. So many of us had a visceral response to the word. The comments themselves were gifts as they expressed longings for home and belonging that are not easily verbalized. If you’ve not seen the post, click on the link above to take a look – make sure to read through the comments – they are the best part.

*C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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On Sun-Drenched Elsewheres

Published on by Marilyn14 Comments
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“Now more than ever do I realize that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.”
Isabelle Eberhardt

I wake early on the off chance that there will be a snow day and the ‘non-essential’ personnel can stay home. I look out the window and my answer is there in the small amount of snow that has accumulated overnight. Hot coffee in hand, I sit in the couch by the window, a warm blanket tucked around me.

And I dream of my sun-drenched elsewheres. 

I’m sitting on the verandah at the Holland Bungalow, that big, old building designed for visiting medical staff to come for months at a time while they set up eye camps in Shikarpur and other nearby villages. It’s late afternoon in the winter and the sun is making shadows through the dusty screen. I am a teenager and am plucking out mournful songs on my guitar. The three chords I know are used over and over (and over) again. What I lack in guitar-playing skill I make up for with my voice, which is better than average. I am utterly content in that moment on that verandah. Soon we will have strong, sweet, tea in the garden, dipping sugar-covered Nice Biscuits into the steaming hot drink.

♦♦♦♦♦

Fast forward and I am on Marty’s balcony in Cairo. It’s early spring in Cairo and Jacaranda trees are blooming everywhere. The weather is perfect covering up the fact that this is a city with pollution problems. I’m waiting on the balcony while Marty makes coffee. We meet regularly on her balcony — it is the safe space for me and many others. Marty has that ability to ask questions and get to the heart of what is going on. I love this city and I love this balcony. I love that the sun beats down and warmth envelopes my body.

♦♦♦♦♦

Several years later I am in Phoenix, Arizona. Our beautiful yard faces the desert and the patio is perfect for resting and dreaming. The bright, blue water of our pool reflects sunlight and all is calm. I see a bunny running across the yard to hide in the Bougainvillea bushes. My children will be home from school soon but I have this moment of sun-drenched peace and contentment. I love my yard and I love the sun.

♦♦♦♦♦

It is this past summer and I am walking toward the ocean. The rocky coast is in front of me, and a sunset that defies description lights up the sky. The whole world is bathed in golden color. Ahead of me a sheet hung on a clothesline to dry waves in the breeze, a perfect picture of nostalgia, better still saudade – that poignant longing for what no longer exists.

♦♦♦♦♦

I give in to the deep longing I feel for just a moment, allowing myself the space to remember. Because there can be strength in remembering. 

Time to leave this dreaming of mine. The clock is ticking and my bus comes soon.

As I pull on sturdy boots over my thick socks I recognize that I’m not discontent, and I don’t dread the day.  But taking the trip back in time to sun-drenched elsewheres was a gift for me this day.

Where are your sun-drenched elsewheres? Do you allow yourself to have moments of longing or do you push them away for fear they will paralyze you? 

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Killing the Saudades (Matar Saudades)

Published on by Marilyn28 Comments

How can a place I’ve never been feel so familiar?

For the past 8 days I’ve been on a service trip to Goa, India. As is the case with most trips where you go to ‘serve’, you come back with far more than you ever anticipated. It was a remarkable trip and I’ll be processing it for a while.

Though I lived for 23 years in Pakistan, I never had the opportunity to go to India. Relations between the countries vacillate between not good and quite bad so going back and forth was not easily accomplished.

India is not Pakistan, as Robynn wisely reminded me in a truth filled letter before I left;in fact the differences are profound. Yet there are so many similarities in those things that feel like home. Curry and chapatis, rice and raita, Urdu masquerading as Hindi, small kiosks with everything from batteries to long life milk, busy bazaars, kameez and shalwar, crazy traffic that feels normal, and ready smiles and relationships. All of these met me at deep soul levels, so deep it is difficult to articulate.

These were the sights, sounds, and smells of home.

They were brought up from deep in my psyche and nourished my heart.  They are woven in my tapestry of memories and were called up on this trip.

There’s a phrase in Portuguese that goes along with the word “Saudade” – the phrase is “Matar Saudades”.  ‘Saudade’ itself is best described by A.F.G. Bell in his book In Portugal of 1912 as “a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness.” Matar Saudades literally means “Killing the longing, killing the saudade”. You say it when you get together with a friend you haven’t seen for a long time – let’s kill the saudade – Let’s get together. Let’s have our fix and then we can move forward for a time. You say it when a sound or smell fills you with a sense of wistful joy, you remember, you wrap yourself in the memory for a moment and in doing so, you kill the longing, you “matar saudades”. 

And that’s what happened on my trip. For a time the saudade was killed. I was fully engaged in a world that felt familiar and comforting. To be sure we worked hard and got little sleep, to be sure I knew we couldn’t keep up the pace we kept for much longer. But this saudade, the longing I experience so often in the west was killed for a time.

Ute from Expatsincebirth says this about killing the saudade: “It’s used to express the end of this feeling (“matar” means “to kill”, “to end something”). You can “matar saudade” by looking at pictures, talking about what makes you feel this way and by re-living (in your memories) the moment you’re feeling sad about.

I am back now, sitting on my couch in a land where I struggle to feel at home. A cool breeze comes in from the outside and September is quickly moving us into a glorious fall. I am not discontent, but I am so grateful for the time this past week – where in slums and church services, bazaars and schools I was able to kill the saudade.

Blogger’s note: Saudade – A Word for the Third Culture Kid is by far the most popular post on Communicating Across Boundaries. If you have not yet read it, you may want to as it helps set the background for this post.

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Guest Post: “Longing for the Other Place”

Published on by Marilyn12 Comments

Today’s post came by way of a comment on the post Saudade. It resonated deeply with me and I asked permission to share as a blog post. It is written by Anne Alexander, a fellow TCK. You can take a look at the end for a short bio.

I hope you enjoy this post and may your Sunday be a welcome rest from the chaos and busyness of life. 

Yesterday I went to a funeral for a dear friend. It was a true celebration (the most joyful, Christ-honoring I’ve ever attended), but that couldn’t stop the tears, even in worship.

As funerals and farewells often do, this one brought up the pain of losing my brothers in childhood, and all the related pain of leaving relatives and friends on both sides of the ocean time after time after time. It brought up the longing for the ‘other place’, whichever one I wasn’t in, and the people I love around the world.

TCK lives are filled and colored with losses of all kinds.

Some of us stuff feelings really well for a long time (for me, until middle age), but some of us are blessed, unable to do so.

In the long run, the ‘expressers’ are less likely to develop physical or mental aberrations because ‘the truth must out’, and our pain is truth to us.

The angst the world feels because of the God-shaped, Heaven-shaped longings implanted when we were created for Him hums in their experience like an irritatingly loud refrigerator– sometimes softer, sometimes louder, but ultimately ignorable until the margins of our lives are used up.

As TCKs we live with less margin most of our lives, continually pushed into areas of growth, change and challenge. We may disguise the irritation and angst of being  between homes and Home, but we can’t hide it any more than a person with 3 arms can hide it under a 2-armed shirt.

Growing up, we’ve sampled more fulfillment and full-use of our potential, more of and varied pleasures and experiences, more pain and loss, than many of our passport-country friends do in an entire lifetime.

We are accustomed to adrenaline in traffic and true life-threatening experiences, to fox-hole friendships with those we work and worship with, to ‘relatives’ closer in spirit, purpose and faith than any blood relatives we could find in our passport country.

We have lived life without the bubble wrap, warfare without boxing gloves, and the exhilaration of seeing God come through when it really matters.  And we know it’s more than just making the next traffic light green so we can get to work on time.

Is it any wonder that we grieve the distancing from LIFE that sometimes seems to accompany return to our passport country? Is it any wonder that we long for friends and ‘relatives’ like those with whom we grew up, or worked with in our country of adoption?

Thank God for a word like ‘saudade’ that helps us express the inexpressible longing for that remembered world of discovery, friendship, growth and possibilities. We are not alone. And there will at last be a place where all potentials will be realized as they were meant to be.

But until then, my heart will go on singing (even if sometimes the minor key spirituals of hope);
But until then, with joy I’ll carry on (knowing that even if no one else understands, my Creator, Companion and Burden-bearer does)–
Until the day my eyes behold the city,
Until the day God calls me Home. (Until Then chorus by Ray Price)

And in the meantime, that third arm comes in handy for all kinds of tasks, like wiping the tears I sometimes can’t hide, or helping a friend in need.

Kindergarten in Mandarin was TCK Anne Alexander’s introduction to Taiwan, and for 44 years she has called Taiwan home. At present she’s teaching and researching Bible storytelling in Mandarin for a doctorate from Biola’s Cook School of Intercultural Studies. 

“Saudade” – A Word for the Third Culture Kid

Published on by Marilyn281 Comments

“Saudade”

It’s described as a unique word with no equivalent in English. Its origin is Portuguese and it was first used in the 13th Century. It is a longing, a melancholy, a desire for what was. It is “Saudade.”

Many immigrants and refugees search for words that adequately describe the peculiar longing for what they left behind. Not the war and evil that is a relief to escape, but the land, the people, the food – all that encompasses that which is home. Doctors and nurses working with large populations of immigrants and refugees often simply put it down as “depression.”

A health center I know desperately tried to find out through a survey what percentage of their immigrant and refugee patients had depression. The survey was unsuccessful. It did not reflect the narrative that these health care providers were hearing from patients.

One day a woman from Haiti said to them, “Have you ever thought about asking patients if they are homesick?” They looked at her in surprise. No, they had not. With a simple change of a word, they felt they were better able to get to the heart of the feeling. But is it depression? Depression is defined as a “severe despondency and dejection, accompanied by feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy.” That is not what immigrants are describing.

What they describe are feelings so deep that you can scarcely give words to them. Your throat catches. You experience an intense, but wordless, longing and desire. How do I know this? Because I have experienced it, first hand. What we long to describe is Saudade.

The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness. A. F. G. Bell In Portugal of 1912

Many know that they will never go back to the place where they feel most at home. They realistically accept this, but not without saudade. A Portuguese friend of mine recently told me about her father. He is in his nineties and came to the United States with a large family over fifty years ago. A year ago, he went back to Portugal for what everyone thought would be a short trip. Now over a year later, he is still there. All the years he was in the United States, he experienced saudade. He has returned so he no longer has to experience this intense longing; he is back in a place where he is viscerally at home, in a land that he loves.

Third culture kids often struggle to give voice to their longing. Well aware that they are not from the country or countries where they were raised, they still have all the connections and feelings that represent home. When trying to voice these, others look on with glazed eyes. Just recently, someone said to me, “But you’re not an immigrant! You’re American!” The tone was accusing. It was meant to be. What was unsaid was, “Give it a rest! We know you grew up overseas. Big deal. You’re American and you’re living in America.”

Ah, yes… but I have saudade. I have that longing for something that “does not and cannot exist.” I know that it cannot be. And on my good days, it is well hidden under the culture and costume of which I am now living. But on my more difficult days, it struggles to find voice only to find that explaining is too difficult. Finding the word gives voice to these longings.

I have often been looked at with impatience. “Third culture kids are not that different!” says the skeptic. “We all have times of longing,” but I would argue, gently, that our experience is different. We are neither of one world nor the other, but between. Our earliest memories are shaped by sights, sounds, and smells that we now experience only in brief travels or through movies and television. All of those physical elements that shaped our early forays into this world are of another world. And so we experience saudade. And the simple discovery of a word gives meaning to those feelings, and can validate and heal. 

Blogger’s Note: A great way to kill the saudade is to go to the FIGT Conference in Amsterdam in March! Click here for more details!

This essay is published in Between Worlds: Essays on Culture and Belonging © Doorlight Publications, July 2014. All rights reserved. No part of this essay may be reproduced without express permission from the author and publisher.

To read more essays like this on third culture kids and living between worlds, go to Amazon.com and purchase the book Between Worlds: Essays on Culture and Belonging. Kindle edition is only $3.99! 

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It’s funny how the simple act of discovering a word that gives meaning to those feelings can validate and heal. That is what I believe “Saudade” can do for the third culture kid.

Between WorldsFor more reading on Third Culture Kids make sure to purchase the book Between Worlds – Essays on Culture and Belonging available July 1, 2014 from Amazon.

Be sure to read the outstanding comments below from others who live between worlds.

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