Migration news has many faces. People running across the border, crossing rivers, crammed into a detention center, moving in buses across states, surviving on rafts or used as a symbol of separation.
Not many viral videos talk about the emotional toll.
National Geographic’s “Brain Games” host, Jason Silva, recently created one of these touching instants of insight into migration. He, born and resident of Venezuela until high school, spoke with perfect Spanglish about how he achieved success in his career in the U.S.
He boiled it down to two things: fluent English and the passion of the Venezuelan essence.
But with a video that tried to be casual, he experienced a moment of healing and tears when, in his own words, he felt the collective pain.
Silva is no stranger to videos that reach many people; as a TV host and digital content creator he explains, with passionate words, how things work all the time. One of his most famous viral moments happened when he was describing to a baby how he came into the world.
Although he has talked about his roots before, his most recent video about his country had a different impact on him and on others. During those minutes, as he processed his own words, he could see different parts of himself: the essence of his country, the resentments and the part he cut off because of the pain.
“I’ve kinda like excommunicated myself from my country,” he said.
However, he acknowledged the key to self-acceptance after citing the work of philosopher Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, or the monomyth — a concept about the transformation of a character after embarking on a challenge, which doesn’t only apply to fiction.
In a subsequent video he reflected on that moment: “We cry together, we heal together. I have become fascinated by collective grief and collective healing. It’s a bit of a miracle, isn’t it? Thousands or perhaps millions of ‘strangers’ temporarily joined together by shared grief, made whole together by collective suffering, a mass purge of sorts, that releases our deep anguish from our tissues — because the issues are in the tissues!”
It’s not easy, all of us who have migrated know that. We can adapt, belong and be happy in another place, but we can’t stay without roots. Living in the present is vital for a successful migration; if the head is in the old home, it’s impossible.
But tearing out the page doesn’t erase the past either, it just leaves evidence that something is missing.
We can adapt, belong and be happy in another place, but we can’t stay without roots
The mood to deal with it is not there every day. Hiding is sometimes part of an act of preservation to keep safe emotionally on days when the energy for simple conversation is depleted. The barrage of questions can be exhausting. Everyone wants to know what’s happening, few come to understand why more than 7 million people have left Venezuela in recent years.
Because of this lack of understanding, most online videos on migration generate xenophobic comments. Silva’s video caused a different kind of response. An American woman married to a Venezuelan recalled the mourning and loss of the land, Latin Americans identified with the grief and a woman who identified as Jewpanese (white, Jewish, Japanese American) acknowledged her own racial healing struggle after rejecting parts of her for social self-preservation.
It’s challenging to feel different and exhausting to defend a position. It’s a balancing act. If we get rid of our identity, we don’t recognize ourselves, if we keep it without adapting, we lose the opportunity to belong to a new home.
Other factors are involved, the success of the migration process includes the where and when, too. “The Handmaid’s Tale” is great at showing this: when in the first season the wave of migrants from the U.S. crossed into Canada, they welcomed them with open arms; in the last episode of the fifth season, June fled with thousands of people who no longer felt safe in friendly Canada after acts of violence and hatred.
The TV show, adapted from Margaret Atwood’s novel, exposes a reality that Venezuelans think wherever we go: it seems that nothing is safe; even the most stable place can be shaken. We saw how many expatriates arrived in Venezuela. Later, migration happened in the opposite direction.
Genuine acceptance, to yourself and to others, seems unrealistic right now, but perhaps we can break down those self-imposed limits. A user recalled in the comments of Silva’s video the words of Maya Angelou: “You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all.”
Brené Brown expands on this idea, “I feel I belong everywhere I go, no matter where it is or who I’m with as long as I never betray myself.”
This concept makes the word home take on a whole different meaning. Migrants often wonder where they belong. Although we have roots, family, work, friends and a new home, our place is in each of us, we belong to ourselves first.
Image: William Fortunato