Selfie: The things we bring without knowing
For migrants, sometimes the real journey is noticing the things we carried across without meaning to.
Migration isn’t a clean swap where you exchange old habits for new ones. Every now and then, I catch myself doing something I moved here to escape.
A friend of mine parks in a four-hour zone and leaves her car there the whole day, like it’s a family plot handed down through generations. When I pointed out the small matter of the actual parking sign, she waved me off. “Relax. Nobody checks.”
She said it with the breezy confidence of someone who has performed a cost–benefit analysis and found the universe agreeable. This is the exact behaviour many of us spent years complaining about back home — the casual bending, the strategic dodging, the tiny rebellions that make life feel like an obstacle course.
We swore we were done with all that. We landed in New Zealand expecting order, serenity, and perhaps a nation of people who instinctively follow queues the way birds follow migratory routes. Then the old instincts start leaking out of us.
Another friend found a clever way to skip a long right-turn queue. Perfectly legal, technically. But also the kind of thing that makes everyone else on the road glare at you like you’ve personally ruined their day.
To me, it seemed so obviously wrong at first. A shortcut dressed as legitimacy. I happily took the moral high ground. The view from up there was lovely. Then, over the next few months, I found myself doing the same manoeuvre. Just once, I told myself. Then again, because the first time didn’t lead to the collapse of Western civilisation. Before long, I had joined the ranks of people I was quietly judging.
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When I’d earlier pointed out the ethical issue, my friend had said, “The road rules haven’t kept pace with the traffic increase.” I’m only breaking the rule because the rule broke first. Classic.
Back home, bending the rule wasn’t moral failure; it was often self-preservation. Here, those same techniques jump out in the supermarket queue, at the traffic light, in the parking lot — behaving like old software auto-launching despite repeated attempts to uninstall.
Every now and then, I catch myself doing something I moved here to escape. That’s the comic tragedy of migration: discovering that I didn’t just bring my suitcase; I brought the entire database of reflexes I believed I’d outgrown.
Migration isn’t a clean swap where you exchange old habits for new ones. It’s an ongoing negotiation with the earlier versions of yourself — the one that misplaces cutting corners for some form of efficiency.
Sometimes the real journey is just noticing the things you carried across without meaning to — the good, the bad, and the mildly embarrassing.
