“Let go like a rich person. Don’t let go like a pauper. Paupers don’t have anything before or after letting go.”
That’s Thanissaro Bhikkhu, quoting his teacher Ajaan Lee, in a dhamma talk called “Is ‘I Am’ the Problem?”. It’s a Buddhist teaching dealing with the notion of self, but it’s also the clearest thing I’ve found on what it takes to rebuild an identity in a new country. He’s arguing against the idea that you should just erase your sense of self as fast as possible, drop the “I” and be done with suffering. His point is not to throw away your sense of self before you’ve built anything with it. Use it as a bridge to get somewhere else, somewhere better. Develop real skill, real competence, a real sense of what you’re capable of, first. Get the most out of it. Only then does letting go mean something. If you let go too early, before you’ve built anything significant, your letting go might be empty.
A pauper’s letting go looks like humility from the outside. Inside, it’s just absence dressed up as detachment. Letting go like a rich person is the opposite: you built something real first -ease, competence, a track record- and you release it because you no longer need to grip it. You can count on something else now.
The same split shows up when you change language or country
When you move to a new country and you start living in a new language, you’re forced into a kind of letting go you didn’t sign up for. The version of you that was witty, funny, respected, articulate in your first language and your home culture isn’t fully available to you anymore. You arrive somewhere new and you’re slower. It’s a simpler “you.” Sometimes it feels like being a child in a room full of adults.
There are two ways to let go of that old identity, and they’re not the same.
Letting go like a pauper sounds like:
I used to be someone, and now I’m nobody, so I might as well stop trying to be anyone.
You tell yourself the old identity didn’t matter that much anyway, sour grapes dressed up as wisdom. But there’s nothing solid underneath it. You never actually built the ease, the competence, the sense of self that would make the release real. You’re not releasing an identity. You’re covering for the fact that you never fully had one to begin with, in either language.
Letting go like a rich person is different:
I built something important in my first language, in my old country, and I can become someone else here and now.
You have real competence, real relationships, and a real track record behind you. Letting go of the old version doesn’t come from frustration or from pretending it didn’t matter. It comes from having enough there that release doesn’t feel like loss. You’re not performing detachment. You’re actually at ease, so setting the old identity down doesn’t require gripping or a story about how little it was worth.
Same outward move. In both cases you’re walking away from who you used to be. But the internal act is completely different.
Don’t drop the old identity before you’ve built the new one.
Thanissaro’s argument against rushing to erase the self applies just as well to rushing to erase the old self in a new language. If you try to let go of your first-language identity before you’ve built real competence, real relationships, a real sense of what you’re capable of in the new one, you’re not being humble or fast-adapting. You’re a pauper pretending to have already arrived somewhere.
Build the new version first. Get good at something in the new language and country. Only then does setting the old identity down actually mean something.
What this looks like in practice
A few markers I’ve noticed, in my own move across languages and countries, and in clients doing the same:
Pauper’s letting go clings to a story instead of a foundation. You either overclaim the old identity (bringing it up constantly, as if the new context owes you recognition) or dismiss it (pretending it never mattered, so the loss doesn’t count). Both are the same move: neither is built on something you actually earned.
Letting go like a rich person treats the old identity as something real that you’re no longer carrying, not something you’re performing indifference about. You wore it because it fit the previous season. You’re not burning the coat, and you’re not pretending you never owned one. (I wrote about this same image with careers: the clothes you don’t throw away, just stop needing every day.)
The question worth asking isn’t “what identity am I losing.” It’s “did I actually build something here, or am I just telling myself a story about letting go.”
A pauper’s letting go turns every new-language stumble into proof that starting over never mattered anyway, a quiet resignation. Letting go like a rich person turns the same stumble into a beginner’s tuition, paid by someone who already knows exactly what they built before and trusts they can build it again. It’s an informed investment.
A few questions for you
Where are you letting go like a pauper right now, telling yourself the old identity never mattered?
What did you genuinely build in your old language, your old country, your old career, that you can trust is still yours even as you set the identity down?
And where in your current transition are you already letting go like a rich person, without having noticed it?
Source: Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “Is ‘I Am’ the Problem?” dhamma talk, April 26, 2026.