Through the ages, people have moved from country to country, or land to land. And always, they have had some good reason for it. It might have been famine, it might have been wars, or it might have been political or religious persecution. In most cases it had to do with the hope of creating a better life for themselves somewhere else. One good Norwegian friend sometimes points out that I`m prone to stating the obvious, and I guess he would have done that with what I just wrote.
But in my case, it`s not really that obvious. For the last three months, I have been living in the Czech Republic, and I am not alone being an expat here. Prague has got loads of expats, having moved here for different reasons. Some moved here because they had a hard time getting a job at all back home, and some people because they simply could get a better job here. I had a good job back home. It was well paid, and comfortable enough. I had good colleagues, with whom I had a great time. And of course, I was safe, living in one of the safest areas in the world. Still I wasn`t happy with my life there. One of my former colleagues was sometimes talking about Abraham Maslow`s hierarchy of needs. As long as your basic needs (food, sleep, safety etc.) are not met, you will be occupied meeting those. If you`re constantly hungry, most of your time and energy will be spent trying to get food. But when your basic needs are met, you will try to get your less basic needs met as well, like self-esteem, fulfilling your potential or filling your life with interesting experiences. Maybe when you live in a place like Norway, your basic needs will be met, and some people tend to get a little bored. Being safe and well fed, and having a "comfortable" life, can sometimes be boring.
Maybe that is the reason a lot of people decide to go and live abroad, where the standard of living is lower, and where you earn less money. Compared with my salary in Norway, what I earn here is a joke. And getting simple things done can be a hassle sometimes, especially since I haven`t put as much time as I planned into learning Czech, and communcating with people can be hard. But at least it feels more interesting and more stimulating than living back where I used to in Norway. I have a feeling that I experience different things, that I learn more about the world, at least in a different way than I would back home.
As an historian, I sometimes notice that as the world move forward in time, some things stay the same. People behave in the same way as they did 2000 years ago. Sometimes they do it for the same reasons, sometimes for differing reasons. People will always be people. As people during the ages migrated to create a better life for themselves, so did I. Not because my life was bad, but because it felt like I was in the wrong place at the wrong time in my life. A luxury problem, perhaps, feeling that my life was too comfortable (or boring), with all my basic needs met, but with some of the ones at the top of Maslow`s pyramid met unfulfilled.
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