'Want to emigrate? Roll up your lip ': Mikhail Labkovsky gave advice on how to leave your homeland
'24.09.2019'
Source: Delfi.lv
What are people looking for leaving their home country? What do they lose at home? Can everyone take root in a foreign land? Who should return? Can emigration make people happier and their living standards higher? The famous Russian psychologist Mikhail Labkovsky shared his personal experience of emigration-re-emigration and gave advice on how to correctly leave his homeland.
Psychologist Mikhail Labkovsky is convinced that categoricalness in the issue of emigration is the last thing. In the process of entry-exit, the winner is the one who thoroughly weighs all the pros and cons and is ready to return, having forgiven the homeland for all insults, if circumstances have changed, writes Delfi.lv.
Why do people leave
- There are a thousand and one reasons. Someone wants to get married successfully. Someone cannot find a job at home. Someone cannot live without freedom and democracy. Someone generally considers their country to be miserable and "about nothing" ... Each such request can be realized abroad, or maybe not. For example, if Gala had not taken Dali to the United States with a PR campaign, perhaps he would have remained a famous Spanish artist - nothing more.
Sometimes emigration from a separate country takes on the character of a total exodus - this is when the country “closes down”. In the sense that cardinal changes in the state do not allow a significant group of people to live the way they used to live. It can be a war, a revolution, a change of order. And people leave with almost the last steamer, not thinking about how they will live outside their homeland.
For example, Bulgakov's "Run" clearly describes how the Russian princes who fled from the revolution were forced to work as porters in restaurants. The feelings of an emigrant are well conveyed in Orwell's novel A Dog's Life in Paris and London, about how the writer worked as a dishwasher in the kitchen of a three-star Parisian hotel and as a hop picker in Kent.
For clarity, I'll tell you about my experience of emigration and re-emigration. In 1990 I worked at a Moscow school, receiving 69 rubles in salary. The barmaid threw a second cutlet into my plate, saying: "If you, goat, were my husband, I would throw you out of the house!" I was already a husband then. My wife received 110 rubles, and the child was two years old. Ever since my school years, I was an Israeli patriot, I loved to go to synagogue, as a result, when I turned 28, my family left for Israel.
On the second day of my stay at the Absorption Center, I met a woman of 50 years, who graduated from the faculty of Leningrad University and the musicology department of the conservatory. I asked her: what do you want from life? She replied: I want to be the senior cleaning lady on this floor. I was very discouraged. Arriving home, I told my wife: even if we have nothing to eat, I still won’t wash the floors. And he did everything to prevent this from happening.
As a result, I was credited with a second degree in psychology (because about a million people arrived from the Union and it was dangerous to leave them unemployed), but the English neuropsychiatrist who came with me was forced to retrain. I also learned to become a family mediator who deals with divorces, settlement, and marriage contracts.
I liked everything, worked a lot, but earned extremely little. At some point, I was offered to head the psychological service of the Russian emigration for 1100 dollars a month. Despite the fact that you had to give 600 for renting an apartment. Then I took a plane ticket and returned to Moscow. Alas, the atmosphere in Russia has recently been such that I began to think about emigration again. But I'm used to making good money, and starting a new life in the sixth ten is not at all like in the third. While weighing.
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Tips for those planning to leave
1. First, as they say in Russia, “roll your lip”. There is no need to count on anything or expect anything.
I remember when in the first year of our life in Jerusalem we somehow walked around the park. Near one tree, my friend stopped and said: here recently a man hanged himself - could not stand the emigration.
Believe me, for the feeling of happiness, the fact of realizing the goal of emigration - a successful marriage, a tidy sum or a convincing career is not so important as a feeling of comfort - do you feel at home in a new country. For example, in London, where I regularly lecture, I would not want to live at all. Not mine. In life, the most important thing is to live so that you like your house, street, country, friends ...
The problem of that poor fellow in the tree is what he decided: in a new place, he will begin a new life. And she began. But not as he imagined it. When you do not expect anything special, you do not have unhealthy ambitions (and there are no healthy ones - I’ll tell you, as a psychologist), and you just live and enjoy the atmosphere, people, smells, architecture - you feel good ...
As soon as you begin to make a career or just take action to survive, you are not so comfortable - you will end up in a foreign market with the rules of others. And one must have great willpower in order to break through this whole wall and become a person in a new life. If for all that, you are uncomfortable in a new country - life turns into intolerable hell.
2. Before changing your life to another, try to live at least a month in the place where you aim, and see how you will feel there.
At the same time, do not forget the anecdote: “One man in paradise got bored and went on a three-day tour to hell. I arrived there, and there is an eternal holiday: everyone is drinking, gorging, carousing. The man returned to heaven, packed his things and asked the Lord to send him to hell for permanent residence. As soon as he arrived, the devils grabbed him by the hands and - on a hot frying pan. He is indignant, they say, but on the excursion everything was different, but the devils answer: don't confuse tourism with emigration. " So during your trial life, keep in mind that living permanently in another country will be more difficult.
3. If you still moved, but feel that it did not fit, nothing beautiful happens - do not be ashamed to return.
You are not a pregnant girl who is afraid to return to her parental family without a husband ... This is your choice and your life. Remember that a change of residence is an important step in life that can change everything. But it is especially important that in the end you are happy.
Important questions about emigration
1. What are the chances of a person who has not found a good job at home, the groom (bride), the realization of ambitions, to find all this in a foreign country abroad?
- Of course, for many people, the main reason for external disorder is internal disorder, and not in the absence of opportunities at home. And moving their situation is unlikely to change.
On the other hand, in different countries there are different opportunities. Even for a European, the American labor market is like an ocean, compared to the sea. But for a resident of a post-Soviet country, for example, Britain is a different scale. There are many more suitable suitors there. Or let's say you are a specialist in the Celtic language - in England there are a lot of chances to find a job, unlike the homeland.
But if we are talking about people of mass specialties (teachers, doctors, engineers, etc.), then their chances are strongly related to the age of the emigrant. If you are not some outstanding scientist, engineer or specialist, then the most dangerous age for emigration is 40-60 years, when you are a little old to get a job (and there it will be considered the first), but you haven’t grown up to retirement. Such people often have to live long on a tiny allowance.
Much depends on your mental mobility: are you ready to go to retraining courses, for example. For example, the writer Vasily Aksyonov was a Russian professor invited to a number of American universities, while he calmly washed dishes after lectures in a restaurant. Otherwise, I would not have survived - at the university they paid a penny. But not all doctors of science are ready for such feats.
I remember that in the 1991 year, when I lived in a kibbutz, they decided to make one technical innovation and invited the 54-year-old professor, engineer, who lived with us, to work. When he was given a computer program for work, he burst into tears - it turned out that all his life he had worked only with a pen, culmination and whatman, but he hadn’t seen the computer in his eyes. In general, before leaving, you must clearly understand the working conditions and the market in the country where you are moving, soberly assessing your capabilities.
2. How much the friends left at home influence the life abroad; parents; native language; a sense of homeland?
- The factor here is whether you were a “home child”. How significant all this was for you during your life at home. How much you were attached to your native trees and water bodies.
The second thing that matters is how emotional you are. There are rational people who live according to the principle “the fish is looking for where the person is deeper, where it is better”. They have no attachment to their homeland.
The question of language is in your head if you can master one more. Today it’s stupid to go to any country (maybe except Russia) without knowing English. And attachment to the native language is strongly associated with age and profession (there are professions based on the language and its subtleties - journalist, lawyer, etc.)
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3. Can emigration make people happier?
- If you were unhappy at home, then maybe. It is clear that if you are humiliated and persecuted, and you break free, you will be happier. By and large, emigration and happiness are not connected in any way with each other.
For example, in the history of “marrying a foreigner” everything is ambiguous - such marriages are usually rationalized, there is almost no element of “chemistry”. This is a story about whether we fit together or not. Maybe someone finds happiness this way, but many do not.
One of the most important conditions for happiness is self-realization. If a person in a new country has managed to realize himself - he is happy. Take Brodsky and Baryshnikov. One at home could sit in prison and be considered unemployed, and the other, although he worked in the best theater, but after the tour had to give all the royalties “upstairs”. And in America, both became rich and famous around the world.
4. Can everyone take root in another country?
- Not all. Many are returning. Many wander from country to country. And many, continuing to live outside their homeland, write letters full of pain and whole novels, how bad they are there.
5. Why is the standard of living of immigrants statistically an average of 15% higher than that of the local population?
- Immigrants are much more active, mobile and livelier than the local population. Let's say I was born and studied in Moscow. And we studied with non-Muscovites who lived in a hostel and endured a lot of hardships. When we were given additional classes or seminars, Muscovites considered it a day of rest, and the newcomers absorbed knowledge 24 hours a day. They got the best grades and good distribution. The same is with emigration - it mobilizes.
