Two Things Can Be True at the Same Time: What Living Abroad Teaches Us about Ambiguity

Annegret Bertsch
18 hours ago
4 min read

Have you ever felt completely certain about a decision and full of doubt at the same time?

Have you ever missed a place so deeply, while also knowing you don’t want to go back?

Or found yourself happy in your life, and yet… something still feels heavy?

At first glance, these experiences don’t seem to make sense. We are used to thinking in clear categories: right or wrong, happy or unhappy, this or that. We are taught - implicitly or explicitly - that clarity means choosing one truth over another. But what if that’s not how life actually works? What if two seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time?

The Discomfort of “Both/And”

For a long time, I struggled with this idea. It felt unsettling.

If two opposing things are true, which one do you trust? Which one defines your reality? Surely one must cancel the other out? But over time, I started to notice something: many of the tensions we experience in life don’t resolve. They don’t lead to a clear answer. They simply… coexist. And the discomfort we feel is not necessarily a sign that something is wrong. It may simply be the experience of holding more than one truth at once. Because this doesn’t only show up in big life decisions or in the expat experience.

You can know something matters to you - and still feel uncertain.

You can love someone - and still feel hurt by them.

You can choose a path freely - and still grieve the alternatives.

These contradictions are not exceptions. They are part of life.

Expat Life: A Masterclass in Contradictions

Sitting at dinner, laughing with new friends and suddenly missing a place thousands of miles away. This is what living abroad often feels like. Not one clear feeling, but many existing side by side.

You can love your life in a new country - and miss home deeply.

You can feel excited about building something new - and guilty about the people you left behind.

You can know that this move was the right decision - and still question it, sometimes more often than you’d like.

You can feel grateful for the opportunities in front of you - and overwhelmed by the reality of navigating a different culture, language, or system.

You might even find yourself in a situation many expats recognize: wanting to stay… and wanting to leave… at the same time.

There is no clean resolution to these feelings. No final answer that makes one side disappear. And yet, all of it is real.

The Hidden Struggle

What often makes this harder is not the experience itself but how we interpret it. We tend to believe that mixed feelings mean something is off.

If I still miss home, maybe I shouldn’t be here.

If I feel overwhelmed, maybe this isn’t right for me.

If my children are struggling, maybe we made a mistake.

So we start looking for clarity. For the “right” answer. For the one feeling that should win. But what if the goal isn’t to resolve the contradiction? What if the goal is to hold it?

Learning to Live in Ambiguity

In many ways, life abroad teaches us something we often resist: there is more than one way of doing things.

You can eat with a fork or with chopsticks. You can celebrate Christmas and Lunar New Year. You can build a life that includes multiple cultures, perspectives, and ways of being.

Why should our inner world be any different? Why do we expect our emotions, our decisions, and our identities to follow a single, clear line?

The reality is: life is often ambiguous. And learning to live with that ambiguity is not a weakness - it is a skill.

A Different Way of Looking at It

In coaching, this is something I come back to again and again - not by giving answers, but by asking questions.

Not: Which feeling is the right one? But: What if both are true?

Not: What is the perfect decision? But: Can you acknowledge what you gain - and what you lose - either way?

There is a quiet shift that happens when we stop trying to eliminate one side of the experience. More space. Less pressure. And often, more self-compassion.

We still make decisions. Life still asks us to choose paths, to take steps, and to move forward. But making a decision doesn’t always resolve the feelings that come with it. We can move ahead and still carry doubt, loss, or longing with us.

And more importantly, we are allowed to revisit those decisions. We are often taught to stay consistent, to follow through, to not change direction once we’ve chosen. But life is rarely that linear. Not every choice is final. Not every path is fixed. Life changes, we change and with that, our decisions can change too.

And maybe that is something life abroad teaches us in a very real way: when we learn to live with ambiguity, we also discover a different kind of freedom. The freedom to change our minds. To take a different path. To respond to who we are becoming, not just to who we once were.

COACHING because clarity doesn’t always come from choosing one truth but from learning to hold both.