Facebook denies me the right of return

According to Wikipedia (which is where all the world's wisdom resides) the right of return is "a principle of international law, codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, giving any person the right to return and re-enter his country of origin."

About six months after moving to India I began to have a nightmare in which I tried to fly back to the United States.  I got as far as the border when one of the beefy security guys whom they hire, I think, solely based upon how intimidatingly they can glower, opened a massive ledger and told me "Our records show that you renounced your US citizenship.  You may not pass."

I woke up in a cold sweat over this multiple times.  It turns out that renouncing US citizenship is actually a really involved process, and consular officers can choose to ignore the request if they think you're drunk or out of your mind.  (Although actually these last two seem like good reasons to accept someone's citizenship renunciation...who shows up at a consulate drunk?  But I digress...)

Anyway, this dream actually almost came true, since I refused to believe that exit passport control was real.  It turns out that it is, and not something one should joke about at the airport.

Like a lot of so-called "expats," I've somehow convinced myself that when I left the United States, the US and all its people ceased to exist.  Sitting around a table the other day in some swanky bar that nonetheless felt like a revelatory and new place to us, some friends and I were discussing whether it would be hard for us to relate to people who had never lived abroad.

"What if I become one of those annoying people who's always like, 'well, when I was in Delhi...'" one wondered.

"What if I just don't get where people are coming from anymore?" asked another.  We all nodded wisely at each other, like we were war veterans who shared a single formative memory.

Of course, Facebook exists partly to puncture the bubble of twenty-something ego.  Going on Facebook the other day, I began to suspect a far more fundamental truth: my old friends and family might have trouble relating to me.

We carry around this necessary misconception that we can return to our old lives and pick up where we left off, but that's not possible.  Living in India has changed all of us, in my case partly because it's been going on for so long.  But the past two years have changed everyone.  Looking through Facebook reminds me that even though I've been off on a great adventure, so has everyone I know: moving on, getting new jobs, seeing new cities, getting engaged and even married.

For years I teased my parents about their belief that India had remained static without them, always ready to receive them back at the exact point in time at which they left.  But I realize now how important and instinctive it is to believe this.  If you spend too much time thinking about how much "home" has changed, you begin to realize that the real effect of your decision has been to drive a wedge into a process that would otherwise have been seamless - the process of growing apart from your past.

I had certain ambitions when I came to India, but the truth is I haven't achieved very many of them.  I have achieved things I didn't dream I would, though.  One of my favorite quotes comes from Steve Martin: "As I've grown older, I've realized that I was right to worry.  But I worried about the wrong things."  There is a corollary to this: "I've realized that I was right to dream.  But I dreamed about the wrong things."

It's hard to accept that your future will not be what you might have expected, although it can still be great.  (For me, at least, this is still the hardest thing to accept.)  The problem with life is that there is no right of return - not to your old friends, not to your old life, but most of all, not to your old self.