Third Energy is the most powerful creative force that people in Third Culture circumstances harness to overcome
difficulties and succeed in challenging situations
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Having been offered an opportunity to live and work overseas meant going for a “look see” before making the final to decision to accept the placement.
Being faced with the challenge of moving countries, cultures and connections certainly made it an inter-dimensional experience! Every level of being is presented with the new and the different. Sights, smells, sounds, spaces, landscapes, language, tastes, traffic, markets and food… the list seems endless! The ability to synthesise all of what we went with; our primary integrated culture, with all that we interacted with on our journeys in this new life, led me to the understanding of developing two worlds: my internal view of what I knew as culture and this new world of a different evolution of culture; a second and exotic nomenclature! I came to realise that the intersection of these two worlds produced a “third culture” status, a place that many expatriates experience after having lived between worlds so to speak. The integrative development of a third cultural perspective allows us to operate in remote and complex communities in very functional and enriched ways. It is my contention that we use our psychological constructs; our “first energy”, to work out a way of interpreting this new cultural information and practically apply it to our physiological or “second energy”. This incorporates, for instance, learning new foods, new languages, interacting with the local peoples and undertaking as many different positive social and cultural experiences as we can. A multitude of opportunities are available to immerse oneself in once we combine these two energies. Alongside these are the networking frameworks that expatriates set up for themselves as a community that is part of, but different from the local people. These are the learning centres, the cafes, the airport lounges, the hotel lobbies, where information and connections are exchanged and made on the fly! These coalitions of connectivity allow us an unlimited chance to tap into a “Third Energy” source, the centre of the two circles of our figure 8, our infinity number, made up of our first and second energies! As International citizens, we share a unique bond of living outside ordinary spaces and ordinary time zones in extraordinary situations with incredible people with amazing stories. |
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