Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds by David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken arrived in the mail today. I first read this book about a year ago, after my mom found it. While she was reading it, she would suggest that I read the book, often pausing at random times to tell me that she learned so much about me from reading it, or that my life made so much more sense to her since reading the book. So I decided that if it made my mom, who is pretty close to being my best friend, tell me she understood me more from reading it, then I should read it too. Mom was right. This book taught me why I thought the way I did.
I laughed at some of the stories in this book and cried at others. It seemed like this book was describing my culture, my identity, and my life! I found other Third Culture Kids and compared notes. Had they read this book? What where their experiences with “normal” people? Were they military brats, missionary kids, somehow connected to a business or something all together different? Did they just move a lot?
As I thought about the answers I got and the book itself, I decided that I wanted to re-read the book, slowly and taking notes/highlighting/marking it up.
One repercussion from reading this book seems to be that I just shrug some of my behavior off because I’m a third culture kid, and that’s just how we roll. But as I think about my behavior, I can see that in reality, I’m a third culture kid from the Heavenly Kingdom. My culture should reflect Heaven’s culture–that of worship. So is some of my behavior really sin that I’ve ignored because of the Third Culture Kid mentality? I’ll be thinking about this while I re-read and re-think through this book.
