You can never go home again

This is a true statement about traveling to other countries or even visiting states far from your own who share slightly different mores than you do.

I experienced this the most intensely when I spent 4 months with my wife and children traveling through Thailand, India and Nepal and Japan in 1985 and 1986.

When I came home after being away so long I looked at Americans (Californians) different because I am a Californian and I landed in San Francisco once again after being away for 4 months. Though we all felt like Citizens of the World after being gone so long, we felt very strange being home.

This was the worst culture shock we had experienced in the 4 to 5 months we had been gone:

"Americans in California were acting completely different than people we met everywhere else. What were the differences?

1. Death could take anyone easily any day in Asia and people knew this and there wasn't health care available for most people. So, if something serious happened likely they would die either from the illness or not being able to work and starving to death. This was very real for people everywhere, except for the very rich who could always afford the best health care. the problem is of course that in India then only about 10% of the people could actually afford ANY health care at all then in 1985 and 1986.

2. When we landed in California body language was people very afraid of anyone hurting them.

It wasn't like this in Asia anywhere because they all knew anything might kill them any day and we always saw dying people everywhere we went. The Culture shock in India was getting used to seeing dying people on the streets every day then in 1985 and 1986. And on top of this at one point we saw thousands of lepers with noses and fingers gone begging for food. This was pretty unbearable to experience given where we came from which is rich California relatively speaking. The homeless people in California are at least 10 to 100 times more wealthy than 1/2 of the Indians we met or saw in India because they had access to health care and food unlike at least 50% of Indian people in India at that time.

3. People in California hide in their cars and apartments and don't walk among the common people very much. AT the time we were in Asia only about 4% of the people owned cars (even though many owned a bicycle or what looked like a Kubota rototiller that could pull a cart with the whole family in it at about 5 miles an hour down the busy streets without seat belts then. But, the fear in California because of the relative immortality compared to most Asians was the biggest difference then in 1985 and 1986. 

The point being: "When you leave your home and visit other places you see how narrow minded the people are you grew up around actually are and how they have no real idea what the rest of the world is really like unless they actually went there themselves and so most people are very provincial and ignorant and afraid in the U.S. because they just don't ever travel anywhere else to understand just how good they have it here. Here is sort of like Living in a Disneyland all the time compared to most other countries on earth.

So, you can never go home again simply because it is not the same place it was before you left it (at least in how you see everything ever after).