Man has become a global nomad, says expert

They decide to stay for just a year, but one morning they wake up to realise that they have spent 20 years in the same place. It is a common phenomenon amongst expatriates, especially in the UAE.

Psychiatrist Dr Padmaraju Varrey says this is perfectly normal.

“It’s a common observation,” he said. “They get comfortable here, so they want to stay.”

According to him, expatriates come to the UAE with a certain goal in mind, but when they find that the country is an attractive place to live, they expand their goal.

As the world is getting smaller, people move around the world more. In the UAE, most expatriates feel they are offered diversity, unity and harmony in one place. The country becomes a “comfort zone” and they prefer to stay, he explained.

“There has been a massive transformation over the past 50 years, which has turned the modern world into a shopping mall. We go to the areas that attract us the most,” he said.

Varrey calls modern man a “global nomad”. He believes that a lot of people don’t feel an attachment to any particular area. He said that the world is shrinking due to globalisation and suggested that this is the reason for the weakened home boundaries. He has seen this a lot in the UAE and calls it a “modern day tendency”.

“Today we are easily culturally adopted,” he said, “and therefore we can easily adapt to new places.”