I Moved To The Netherlands, But Who Did I Leave Behind?

In September of 2025, I was feeling a bit homesick, so I [music] traveled back to Ghana for a short trip. And while I was ecstatic [music] to be back home, I noticed something that I hadn't expected. Upon arrival in Accra, it felt quite [music] odd in a way that I had never thought of before. It was either that home had changed [music] or I had or both. But I couldn't quite tell which one it was or whether or not it even mattered which one it was. But that feeling made me very aware in a way that I hadn't thought of before. That is of the full weight of the decision that my wife and I had [music] made when we chose to move uh to the Netherlands. And the change wasn't only felt by me, [music] my family felt it, and my friends also felt it in their own ways. And so today, what I'm trying to do is explore [music] that. The conversation around the version of me that stayed [music] home and whether in this exploration that I will find an answer to a question that I've been sitting with for a while. Whether that version of me is [music] happier in all of this. And the concept that I'm trying to or I'm going to try to explain here may sound like something out of a fiction writing exercise, but I think it's the easiest way that I can make sense of what I've been feeling. When you finally come to the decision to well, and eventually the action to move countries, something happens. I think a major decision like that splits you into two. Well, technically all the choices we make have that effect, but for the sake of this video, let's stick to this one. There is a version of you that stays. That one that would have just gone about continuing in all the things they have always known, being comfortable in, and even to some extent very complacent. The one that never had to rebuild anything because nothing was ever dismantled in the first place. And then there's the version of you that walks into the unknown with all these plans and dreams that will not materialize in the way that you have ever imagined, but still got on the plane with everything and left >> [music] >> anyway. So, those or that is in very simple terms the conversation that I want to explore [music] today. Back home in Ghana, the version of me that stayed was a very No, [music] fairly well-known, not very. Fairly well-known guy who had spent about 10 years in radio. He left [music] that to pursue a career in voiceover and documentary filmmaking. He had managed to build a reputation that certain things came to him without so much [music] effort, without him having to work so much for it. Opportunities found him without him having to chase it down. [music] There was a particular sense of ease in how he moved through his professional life that made him take some privileges for [music] granted in the way that you can only do so when things have always just been there, [music] you know? Not having to translate himself every day, the level [music] of trust that was extended to him simply because of who he was and what he had built. [music] And I think that's a shorthand that comes from being known in a place. [music] And I also remember my wife would jokingly say that she was a little jealous of how work found me back then and how I didn't have to go looking for things because of who I was, at least in our crowd where we lived. The guy who had nothing to [music] prove to anyone in the room. That version of me had never once wondered how difficult it would be to find community, let alone build [music] it. And if anything, I'd say there were aspects of my own preferences that sometimes worked against deeper connections even when the environment was offering it freely. [music] Me personally, I preferred being alone in my own cocoon, sitting with my ideas, daydreaming while work arrived on its own schedule. So, [music] it was fun. But the question I find myself asking now is how long was that version of me supposed to [music] exist before something eventually shifted? That effortlessness started to [music] cost him something he hadn't accounted for. And would he have recognized it when it came? [music] Would he have accepted it or he would have kept renegotiating until it was too late [music] to do anything meaningful about it? That is what I want to find out. But honestly, I think the question that actually matters isn't [music] which version of me is happier. think that's even a question that could have a straightforward answer. >> [music] >> And I'm not sure that's the right question to be asking in the first place. The question that matters is [music] what does his existence tell me about why I left Ghana? And the part that's a little uncomfortable to admit is this. The version of me that stayed [music] wasn't failing. He was doing well, at least on his own terms, which is what I had always wanted. And honestly, >> [music] >> that remains a running theme in how I think about how a good life should be. But there was a kind of certainty available to him that he can only really access [music] when you've never had to question the script that you were handed. He [snorts] knew what success looks like because everyone around him agreed on [music] what success looked like. He never had to ask whether the definition of what he was actually getting was his own or whether he was simply absorbing it from the environment that was around him. But >> [music] >> I did. And I started to ask questions. And it's something that I think I'll be probably doing for the rest of my life in one form or another. [music] And I think that's the real difference between the two of us. That version of me never had to find out whether the Ghanaian script actually fit him because he never stepped out of it long enough to see it clearly. He stayed inside of it. The comfort was real, [music] and the comfort itself prevented the question from ever fully forming. And I'm not saying this was a flaw, necessarily. I'm just saying it's a function of distance. When you can't see a script when you're standing inside it, you [music] need to step out. You need to become a stranger, at least temporarily, to see the shape of the thing that you are living inside. And that, more than anything, is what moving countries >> [music] >> does to you. You're not just relocating geographically, you become a stranger to everything that you used to take completely [music] for granted. The way ambition is talked about, the weight of family expectations, the timeline that you're supposed to follow, [music] what a good life is supposed to look like, and what it's supposed to cost you. The trade-offs that are considered acceptable, and the ones that are considered non-acceptable. So, when I compare my life to his, I try [music] to stop asking whether I am happier, because I've come to believe that that's the wrong question. The right question is whether I left because I was wanting more, or whether I left because that script didn't fit me, or I couldn't quite breathe [music] inside it, and leaving was the only way that I knew that I could find out who I actually was outside of it. And honestly, I don't have a clean answer to that. Maybe both things are true. Maybe ambition and escape are the same thing when you are young enough that you haven't learned to tell the [music] difference between the two of them. But, here's what I do know now. The other self gave me something by existing. He gave me a mirror. Every time I wonder whether I made a right call, I can look back at what could have been, and see clearly what I have traded. And there are a few things that I've traded. I've traded belonging, at least the easy, effortless kind, for perspective. I've traded the comfort of being fully inside something for the clarity of being able to see it from the outside. I became someone who doesn't fully belong in Accra anymore, and doesn't fully belong here [music] either. And I think that's the real cost. It's neither a failure nor a mistake. It's [music] just the honest cost of the choice. And the interesting thing is that I started seeing this new version of myself in small fragments even before the move was fully decided. Even though I didn't fully recognize it at the time, more and more questions about what could be started [music] surfacing whenever my wife and I visited Netherlands in the years before we finally moved. Something was already shifting even [music] then. So, after 2 years of living here, I can look back on a journey so far with a little more clarity and see the actual cost of moving. [music] I've gained and I've lost in both directions, and it's the kind of balance that takes some time to sit comfortably with, maybe longer than the 2 years that I've been [music] here. And in other conversations or other videos I've made in trying to understand the full weight of what living abroad does [music] to a person, I have used Heraclitus's philosophy that you can't [music] you can't ever step in the same river twice, and that framework made it easier [music] for me to understand why my visit to Ghana last year felt so unsettling [music] in a way that I had not anticipated. I don't feel like I have fully settled here in the Netherlands, and when [music] I went back home, it also felt like a foreign place. Yes, it's more familiar, but it had also changed and changed in a way that had nothing to do with me, but everything to do with the fact that rivers keep flowing whether you are in them or not. On one hand, I've gained a new perspective on how adaptable I can be when the situation requires it. I've gained ability or the ability to see my own culture from the outside, which is strange and sometimes disorienting. And I can see this new culture that I currently live in from a certain distance, too, which gives me a vantage point that people who are born in it don't necessarily have. But, that kind of vantage point doesn't always feel like an advantage or the advantage that it sounds like on paper because there's something quietly uncomfortable about belonging neither here nor there. And I have a confession to make, one that I've been sitting with for a while now. So, lately I've been feeling a strong pull toward the version of me that stayed [music] home. I find myself imagining sometimes, quite vividly, all the things that that version of me could have been doing in an environment that offered effortless belonging, where he didn't have to build trust from nothing or explain himself or even prove himself in rooms where nobody had any reason yet to believe in him. I don't know if this is one of those phases that living abroad puts you through, where you cycle back to questioning what life would have looked like if you had never left. The things that I might have done differently in the years before I moved if I had known what the move would actually cost, whether there was a version of this particular move that would have been easier or whether the difficulty was always going to be there and waiting on the other side, regardless of how prepared I was for it. [music] But, I do know that I can't go back and become that person who stayed. And, as [music] much as that doesn't always feel comforting, I also know that I can't afford to treat his existence as a threat to what I currently am. That would be doing a serious disservice to both versions of the story. [music] I didn't drift into this life. I made a choice, and choosing by its very nature means that accepting the death of other possibilities. That in itself is not a tragedy. It's what choosing actually means when [music] you take it seriously. So, I can look at the parallel version of myself with curiosity and maybe even with tenderness, but [music] not with regret. He would have been fine, and I will be fine, too, with every decision that I can continue [music] or continue making from here. The split happened, and both halves are real, but only one of them gets to keep moving forward. All of this is to say that ever since uploading my previous video the invisible wall I've had several interactions via my social media DMs and the running theme has been connection to the story as well as curiosity. And the curious ones have been asking [music] why I do this, why I make such videos and this is the why. I make such videos [music] as an outlet to speak out and make sense of something that is still in motion while it's still tied to a lot of equally important things that have already [music] happened. So if this one resonated with you, if you found yourself thinking about the version of yourself that stayed, the life that exists somewhere in the background of the one you actually chose I'd love to hear about it from you in the comments. Not just whether you think you made the right call, but what looking at that parallel version of yourself has taught you about why you left in the first place.