WHEREVER WE GO

August 1 2012              

As someone once said, “Wherever you go, there you are.” To which I might add

“Sh-t happens, everywhere.” I say this because, I, like most people, still harbor the tiniest illusion that either I, or some yet to be discovered place, can transform me; all I have to do is make the right choice.

I think, and I know Joel would agree, that when we decided to Fly the Coop we had an idealized vision of how that might be, and why not? After all, if you don’t believe that what you’re going to is going to be better than what you already have, why would you choose to go?

All of us set out on journeys during the course of our lives. For some the journeys may seem limited: starting school, leaving the parental home, embarking on a career, marrying, annual vacation. Yet all of us have hopes and dreams and yes, expectations, of how these journeys will enrich us. 

Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to be everything and go everywhere. For years I lay in bed for probably half and hour before sleep took me, envisioning myself as a prima ballerina, an opera singer, an Olympic athlete, a bride, and a mother.

It is an amazing capacity we humans have to create these cinematic visions of ourselves where we are at once the writer, director, camera person and protagonist, projecting our heroic futures onto the screen of our inner eyelids. Over and over again, we wake up. Perhaps in the course of that next day some of us inch a little closer to manifesting those visions.

I have just finished reading a wonderful novel by Claire Messud, “The Last Life,”

A novel that raises questions of identity and belonging, themes that are of great interest to me, along with the question as to whether there is such a thing as choice; this question being one that I have spent decades insisting that yes, there is always a choice. But is there? And do I need the answer to be ‘yes’ because I am a proponent of self-responsibility, or because I need to be in control?

Messud gives an exquisite example of this unanswerable question toward the end of her novel. The protagonist is recalling an event from her childhood when she climbed to the top of a fountain while her parents looked on aghast as she ended up in the murky water below. Rushing to pull her out they asked her what happened, she said, “I was falling, so I jumped.”

I love the determination of that child who chose to experience what started out as an accident, as something self-willed. But then in order to fully explore the nature of choice one would have to ask if there was a moment when she unconsciously chose to fall. Is there such a thing as unconscious choice?

Joel and I were falling when the crash of 2008 happened. You could say we were victims of the economy, but that wouldn’t be true. We were self-made victims who had been living beyond our means. But like Messud’s little girl, when we became conscious that we were falling we decided to jump. Our choice was to downsize and it was a process that took three years to fully understand and implement. And, like the little girly who ended up in the murky water and suffered her parents judgment and displeasure, we too had to disappoint some people on the way down to reality. 

During that period we made a lot of conscious choices: to move out of an expensive rental, to reduce a staff of 5 down to 1 and to sell our house by the sea in order to pay off all debt, to sell our car, and to give away many material possessions. We pored over spreadsheets re-assessing what we spent our money on. It was excruciating and liberating. We landed on our feet, but it was not a free fall.

So we’ve chosen to live in some foreign countries for a couple of years because we want to experience ourselves in the unfamiliar in the hope that in so doing, we will find the unfamiliar in ourselves. But, wherever you go…

And those events that are beyond our ability to choose…the weather, flies, tourism, diminishment of silence…? How do we find a way to acceptance and peace with it all?  For me choice lies in the recognition of the moment, which on a good day can yield immeasurable bounty. Take yesterday for instance.

We breakfasted outside, as usual, in the cool of early morning. Then, surprisingly, it felt too cool. So I chose to go around the side of the house and sit in the sun for a while. Then it got too hot. So I chose to walk around the back of the house, a choice I have, inexplicably, never made in the morning before, having designated it as our evening place. But the shade under the big trees was just the right temperature so I fetched my book and Joel, and we sat for some 3 hours reading, remarking once in a while how nice it was to be comfortably outside during the day. As the sun revolved around us, we moved our chairs to the lower level where the breeze still existed, enjoying lunch there and a few more chapters. Finally, when the sun won, we surrendered to the cool of our bedroom and an afternoon nap and then moseyed into town for a swim and half an hour of basking in the now temperate evening sun. Dinner was a bowl of lentils and vegetables from the farm, with fresh peaches for dessert. 

It was a simple day. Exactly the sort of day we Flew The Coop for. The sort of day you can experience anywhere…if you so choose.