Unmapped: When Worlds Collide
Longer read (~12 min) - pour some coffee
Since the pandemic, something shifted that most people missed.
The world didn't close—it narrowed. Fewer people cross borders now. Corporate relocations contracted by a third in some countries. Individual willingness to relocate dropped 15 percentage points in five years. The infrastructure of global mobility is still there, but fewer people use it.
Which means those who do cross face a sharper question than previous generations: Why am I doing this?
I've spent two decades living that question. Four countries. Fifty-nine borders. What I learned: the question isn't whether to cross—it's knowing which crossings will transform you and which ones will diminish you. The difference isn't luck. It's pattern recognition—and some patterns only become visible after you've crossed the wrong threshold once.
Here's what took me years to see.
Thunderbird
At 23, I was teaching global career management to MBA students at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona. That fall, 380 students from 140 countries converged on the Sonoran Desert—the energy was palpable. My class: 60 of them, packed into a lecture hall, hungry to crack the code of building careers that crossed borders.
I taught them as if it were just a matter of technique. CV optimization. Interview strategy. Personal branding. Cultural intelligence. Network mapping. I even got to meet the Dalai Lama on campus.
The whole experience—those students, that global energy—made me a true believer in what I was teaching: that a global career wasn't just theory, but something to actually live.
So I did. France. Spain. Singapore. Indonesia.
What I didn't know at 23 was that crossing borders would teach me something older than any career strategy.
What Seaweed Taught Me About Borders
The pattern I discovered follows something more ancient than human migration itself. In ecology, where two ecosystems meet — forest and grassland, river and ocean, mountain and valley — organisms face a fundamental choice about boundaries.
Some practice allelopathy: chemical warfare. The seaweed Galaxaura, encountering coral, doubles its production of anti-coral toxins. "You stay on your side, I'll stay on mine." It works. The boundary holds. But Galaxaura grows 80% more slowly and becomes vulnerable to predators. Defense drains the resources needed for thriving.
Other organisms choose differently. They inhabit the edge itself — creating ecotones, transition zones where ecosystems overlap. These boundaries aren't barren. They're abundant. Ecotones host more species than either ecosystem alone. Not just organisms from both sides, but entirely new life forms that exist nowhere else. They thrive because they're between worlds. Because hybrid vigor emerges where different systems collide.
We face the same choice at every boundary. I just didn't know it yet.
Paris: La Défense
In my first couple of years in Paris, I defended.
American directness met French indirection. I doubled down on clarity, refused the game of elegant ambiguity. In meetings, I'd watch colleagues circle topics for twenty minutes, and I'd cut through with "So what's the decision?" The room would go quiet. I thought I was being authentic. I was actually building walls — keeping French norms at bay while insisting my way was the right way.
It worked, in a way. I maintained my sense of self. People knew where I stood.
But I grew slowly. Professionally. Relationally. The energy required to maintain that boundary drained everything else.
Barcelona: The Opening
Spanish time made no sense to me. My colleagues would call meetings for 9am, arrive at 9:20, and start with coffee and conversation. Lunch stretched from 2pm to 4:30pm. The American in me kept calculating: This is wrong. Why are we wasting time?
I could feel myself tightening. Judging every late start, every leisurely lunch. That familiar exhaustion from Paris creeping back—the cost of constant defense.
So I tried something different. I stopped fighting to maintain the boundary. I let it open.
Dinner at 10pm—actually began to feel hungry at that hour. The long lunches stopped feeling wasteful and started feeling like presence. Time itself became cultural, not absolute.
Not Spanish. But something that didn't exist before: someone who could hold both efficiency and patience, who could move between temporal frameworks without thinking about it.
Relationships deepened. Work became more nuanced. Serving clients in ways that weren't possible before.
The Singapore Reckoning
Seven years in Singapore brought the hardest iteration of this choice.
I walked into my first leadership program with a decade of facilitation experience. Knew how to read a room. How to use eye contact to invite participation. How to modulate energy—high, animated, emotionally present—to create safety for risk-taking.
Within the first hour, something was wrong. A woman looked away every time I looked at her. Another kept nodding but wouldn't answer when input was invited. The participants weren't engaging.
The eye contact wasn't creating connection. It was making people visibly uncomfortable. The emotional energy that had worked for years made participants nervous. My American volume—perfectly normal in Paris cafés, acceptable in Barcelona—was suddenly too loud. I got complaints from clients. I had to relearn how to speak in my own language. They wouldn't speak up. Wouldn't engage with exercises that had always worked before. And when they did speak, Singlish left me nodding along while missing half the content.
Every cell in my body wanted to insist: This is how leadership development works. The participants adapt to the method, not the other way around.
But Barcelona had taught what becomes possible when you stop defending.
So I made a different choice. I let go of what I knew.
For two years, radical permeability. Let Singlish teach me to hear meaning in unfamiliar patterns. Let hierarchy teach what "flat" couldn't. Let silence become an answer instead of a problem to solve.
I stopped fighting to be right. Started holding both ways at once—Western and Asian, direct and indirect, fast and patient—not picking sides, just carrying them both.
I inhabited the ecotone—where directness meets subtlety, where egalitarian meets hierarchical, where multiple truths coexist without one dominating.
Something emerged that hadn't existed before. A way of working that could hold both Western and Asian approaches at once, that could code-switch between them, that could serve clients in ways neither framework alone could reach.
Four Paths. One Choice.
When worlds collide, we move through four recurring patterns. I learned this across two decades and 59 countries. Most of us just react. Fear kicks in, old habits take over. But if you catch yourself—if you choose deliberately—everything changes.
Compartmentalize — Keep the worlds separate. French norms stay in France. American efficiency stays with American clients. Adapt your behavior to each context, but never let them mix. It's functional — for a while. Until maintaining the boundaries between worlds starts to cost more than it's worth.
You'll recognize this if: You're code-switching constantly—different posture with French colleagues, different tempo with Spanish ones, different volume with Singaporeans. The transitions are seamless. The exhaustion is real.
Defend — Boundaries up. Territory protected. Paris showed me this path: building cultural barriers that keep the other at bay. Defense can be wisdom—protecting what matters most. Or fear dressed as integrity, rigidity masked as authenticity.
You'll recognize this if: You label differences as "inefficient" or "wrong." Your body tightens when local norms surface. You keep thinking, "Why can't they just do it the right way?"
Leave — Walk away. Not from failure—from discernment. Some thresholds deserve departure, not dissolution. The cost exceeds the gain. This edge isn't yours.
Hangzhou taught me this. That hollow feeling wasn't imposter syndrome—it was integrity signaling I'd crossed a line. I was teaching burned-out employees resilience while their company demanded even more. I'd become a tool for managing the symptoms instead of questioning the cause. Leaving wasn't defeat. It was clarity.
Knowing when to walk away is as vital as knowing when to stay. Departure as wisdom.
You'll recognize this if: Your body says no but your mind keeps rationalizing. The gap between your values and your daily actions keeps widening. You're not growing—you're eroding.
Dissolve — Boundaries open. Permeability begins. Singapore taught me this: the other world reshapes you until you hold both — until you become what couldn't exist in either world alone.
Rarest path. Hardest path. The one that transforms.
This is the ecotone choice.
You'll recognize this if: You stop correcting and start getting curious. The discomfort you felt last month now feels like discovery. You're adapting without thinking about it.
These aren't fixed stages. They're recurring choices at every threshold.
What matters: choosing consciously, not reacting unconsciously.
Before You Board the Plane
The data tells a clear story about the costs of crossing—and the returns that follow.
Ninety-six percent of people worldwide never leave the country where they were born. Research tracking the 4% who do shows a consistent pattern: at entry, earnings drop 34% compared to native-born peers. By year ten, the gap narrows to 16%.
The first two years are brutal—performance dips, social support collapses. But those who make multiple sustained moves show accumulated gains impossible to achieve without crossing: the ability to bridge worlds others can't, networks that span continents, professional versatility that makes you valuable in ways single-market players aren't.
We're more afraid of regretting a move than regretting staying put. So most people stay—even when staying costs more.
But fear of regret isn't the same as wisdom. The question isn't "Should I go?" It's "What am I walking into—and will it expand me or deplete me?"
Before you cross any threshold—geographic, professional, identity—ask these discernment questions:
Will this edge let me integrate who I am—or force me to perform who they want?
Some environments invite your full self—strengths, differences, and all. Others demand you perform a version that fits their script.
I've watched leaders enter cultures where their core strengths were seen as problems to fix. Where "adapting" meant abandoning what made them effective.
The test: Are colleagues curious about your difference, or correcting it? Does feedback sound like "Here's what works here and why" or "Here's what's wrong with you"?
What's the short-term cost—and can I sustain it?
Your first 18 to 24 months will be brutal. Earnings decline. Performance dips. Social isolation. Almost half the recovery happens in that first year—but you have to survive it.
The toll compounds if you're relocating with young children, financial instability, or without a support network.
Can you absorb 18 to 24 months of disruption? Financial buffer? Relational anchors? Tolerance for ambiguity?
Some people have the resources to weather it. Others don't, and there's no shame in that discernment. If the answer is no, that's data, not defeat.
Can you build lasting influence here—or will you always be the outsider?
Some places let you build equity over time. Relationships deepen. Doors open. Then more doors open. Your difference becomes an asset that compounds.
Others keep you at arm's length. You remain the "expat," the "consultant," the "visiting expert." Useful, but never trusted. Never integrated.
The test is simple: Look for people like you who've stayed and built influence. If you can't find them, that's your answer.
What am I willing to lose—and what must I protect?
Every crossing costs something. Some trade-offs expand you. Others hollow you out.
I accepted distance from family to build cross-cultural fluency essential to my work. Painful, but necessary.
I accepted financial uncertainty because safe work that felt hollow cost more.
Name what you won't trade before you cross. That's your boundary.
What You Build at the Edge
When you practice this discernment — when you choose consciously which edges serve you — something shifts. You stop navigating. You start building.
This is what ecologists call the edge effect: zones where ecosystems meet become the most generative spaces. More biodiversity. More resilience. More life that couldn't exist in either ecosystem alone.
I'm living this now in Bali. Two years here — Hindu island in a Muslim archipelago, traditional village life alongside digital nomad culture, Balinese ceremonial time meeting Western schedules. Not passing through. Rooting here. Choosing to build at the boundary itself.
My partner and I are expecting a child at the start of 2026. Through surrogacy. We're naming him Ari. When we chose his name, we wanted something that wouldn't need explaining in any language. Noble in Sanskrit. Eagle in Old Norse. Lion in Hebrew. A familiar name across Indonesia. It means different things in different worlds—courage, vision, nobility—but it doesn't need translation. It's already home everywhere.
He'll be raised between Bali and Singapore, from the ecotone itself. Someone who exists because multiple worlds flow through him.
Where Are You Standing?
What two worlds are colliding for you right now?
It might be geographic, cultural, generational, technological. The question isn't whether to cross—it's whether this edge will expand you or deplete you.
Map your edge. Take 10 minutes this week: Name the threshold you're facing. Where does your old expertise or identity no longer fit? Where is a boundary asking to be crossed—or defended? Simply naming the edge creates clarity.
Notice your pattern. For the next seven days, pause once a day and ask: Which path am I taking right now—compartmentalizing, defending, leaving, or dissolving? Just notice. No judgment. You can't change a pattern you haven't seen.
Apply the discernment questions. If you're facing a potential crossing—geographic, professional, identity-based—work through the four questions. Write your answers. Notice which questions trigger defensiveness. That's where your growth edge lives.
Not every edge deserves your openness. Some require defense. Some require departure.
But the edges worth crossing—the ones asking you to dissolve—don't just change where you live. They change who you become.
| Is this one of them?
Next month: What We Carry Forward — as the year closes, we'll explore what endures as you cross into something new.
Research referenced in this essay includes the OECD’s International Migration Outlook 2025, combining long-term datasets tracking over 7 million immigrants across 15 countries (2000–2019) with the latest migration-trend data through 2024.