Hey Colin,

I am from Mumbai, India and I will be finishing my masters in two months.

My dream has always been to get a good job in the west. I intend to move to Europe or the States to pursue a Ph.D. and eventually work there.

I had a close friend who was a few years senior to me who went to the States for a few years and then ended contact with us. I recently found out that he committed suicide as he couldn’t cope with the pressure of his job and got very lonely due to the cultural differences.

My parents are also worried about the political situation in the west.

When you were in my country or any other country that was drastically different in culture, did you ever feel like you can spend the rest of your life there and can see yourself as part of a different group of people that have a drastically different way of life?

Regards,

Raj

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Hey Raj-

The short answer to that last question is an emphatic “yes.”

I’ve been fortunate to live many places that I would absolutely feel comfortable living in as a more permanent home.

In fact, I suspect every place I’ve lived would serve me well as a potential home: I would just need to recalibrate my expectations while making the transition.

There are differences between all the places you might live, and some of those differences are quite substantial. But a move will almost always involve a change in the substance of your pros and cons, not a transition to dramatically more cons or more pros than you had before.

Does that mean every person is likely to be happy in every situation, every environment? No.

If a substantial amount of your happiness is derived from online activities—Instagramming, playing video games, uploading YouTube videos—living in a region where internet is sparse and barely useable would almost certainly hinder you in that regard.

Similarly, if your sense of well-being and calm is reliant on being close to nature, spending your life in a downtown apartment building, hours from the nearest tree, could be a sub-optimal choice.

That said, it’s possible to find fulfillment in previously inaccessible or unappreciated environmental variables.

A nature buff might find inspiration in the sea of people cascading through the streets of population-dense a city, for instance, and an enthusiastic video gamer might discover previously untapped veins of happiness in kayaking—this discovery triggered by a move to a more rural environment, where local internet connectivity issues limit gaming, but local topography enables water-related adventures.

Regarding your concerns about the current economic and cultural climate in the West:

If you’re keen to move to the US or Europe or anywhere else, it’s better to make that choice and then figure out how to make it work than to be preemptively deterred by the potential hurdles you might face along the way.

This is true more broadly, too: if we allow difficulties to derail us before we even get started on any significant effort, we’ll be unlikely to ever attempt anything challenging and meaningful.

So be careful, but don’t be afraid to pursue goals that are truly important to you.

Regarding your friend: I’m very sorry to hear about his passing. That’s difficult, regardless of the circumstances.

This is part of why it’s so important to make time for both physical and mental health. To have some kind of daily workout, to develop some kind of regular meditative practice (which needn’t be formal meditation of any traditional modality), to eat as well as you can manage, and to give yourself the time required to process and think and focus, to notice things about yourself and implement what you’ve learned, day-to-day.

With self-awareness, you can be more tuned in to your own flaws and foibles, your stresses and limitations, your goals and priorities, and you’ll be able to make beneficial adjustments and tweaks along the way.

This can also help you notice things like indications of depression, clinical or otherwise, which can amplify surface-level issues and distort them into something far more dangerous and unrelenting than they might otherwise be.

You needn’t burn yourself out, needn’t become detached from your health and happiness, in order to have a successful career. And this applies whether you’re in California or Mumbai.