Loving Fiji and Losing Things There: Can You Criticize Your New Home?

You can love it and still wish a few things were different.

By Neil Solomon · 3 min read

Picture a couple named Janet and Colin. They have lived in Fiji for a while. On Tuesday, someone takes a bag from their porch. A few months earlier, something else went missing. Friends call to ask how they are.

Janet says, "We love it here." Then she adds, "And I am tired of locking up."

The story I read comes from a thread of people talking about life in Fiji. One person felt a deep sense of ease there, and also had things taken twice. Both were true in the same account. I think that is worth sitting with.

Two true things at once

We often ask a place to be one thing. Lovely or difficult. Welcoming or cold. But a real place is both, and so is any home. Think of your own street. You can love it and still wish a few things were different.

What the person in the story seems to do is hold both. They do not pretend the losses did not happen. They also do not let the losses erase the calm.

The pull to stay silent

Many people who move feel they must defend their choice. If they say anything negative, someone may say, "Then why did you go?" So they stay quiet, or they only post the sunsets.

I think that costs us. If everyone talks only about the good parts, the next person arrives with a picture that is too bright. A fair account helps them more than a glowing one.

Janet and Colin might practice it like this:

"If I tell my sister about the bag, she will worry," Janet says.

"Tell her about the sunsets too," Colin says. "She'll hear it all."

Who may speak?

There is an old unease about guests criticizing a host. I understand it. A guest who complains all day is unkind. But a guest who speaks honestly about their own experience, without blaming a people, seems different to me.

The trick, I believe, is to describe what happened to you, and not what a whole place is like. "Two times I lost things" is a fact about my life. "These people are thieves" is a verdict I have no right to give. I would keep to the first.

Keeping the love and the lock

Taking reasonable care of your things does not mean you have turned against a place. It is what you do anywhere. You can lock your door in a town you adore.

I think the healthiest view is to treat a bad event as an event, not as a judgment of everyone nearby.