Stranger in our midst

I came to London to pursue myself. When my schooling finished I was off: out of the small town in Scotland where I had outgrown the system, the community and the culture. London offered limitless opportunities of self-improvement, education, anonymity, career and success. Yet I encountered loneliness, loss and self-doubt. I had hoped to find happiness in the achievement of academic prowess and purpose in a city paved with promise. Yet I found emptiness and shallow relationships in which conversations revolved around establishing tenuous links between people who neither cared nor engaged with the other. I was that Other: the Alien. My interactions were framed around this insistence that I was this Other, as if by identifying myself as different I could ease the pain of cultural misunderstanding. Instead of finding a commonality I focussed on the difference between us.

And now? London is my home. I have found fulfillment in the very things from my hometown that I shunned 7 years ago: community, family and a slower pace. I no longer feel or act like an Alien but instead enjoy encountering them in our midst. And yet, my eternal inheritance means I am not of this world, so in a way I remain a stranger, passing through. London is my mission field but it is also my home. Living here is my purpose but settling here is not. Encountering and celebrating difference is my lifeblood, even more as I do so from a place of experience of knowing that bewilderment at this city and her people.