When Certainty Ceases to Be Certain

Living abroad teaches you that stability is often more conditional than it first looks.

After perhaps picking up the language, you can build a career, raise a family, buy a home and gradually begin to feel that a country is yours too. Then a policy changes, they decide to add another zero or two to application fees, or a requirement you had been working towards is tightened, and that sense of security can suddenly feel less solid.

Japan has recently altered a number of immigration and travel-related fees, while PR and business-related visa requirements have also become way stricter.

For someone from outside Japan, these may look like fairly dry administrative changes. But for the non-Japanese folks who might have spent years building a life here, they can prompt much larger questions about whether the rules will continue moving and what that means for their families and careers.

I know that feeling. It doesn’t necessarily come from believing that something terrible is about to happen, it might come from realising that decisions affecting your future are being made without you.

I’ve become less interested in the idea of permanent certainty. I now try to build things that remain useful when circumstances change: transferable skills, trusted relationships, financial breathing room and the ability to communicate clearly across cultures.

None of that makes policy changes irrelevant, but it does make them less capable of defining your whole future.

*Photo by Leonie Zettl on Unsplash