Should I Sell or Should I Stay?
Yesterday I met up with my friend Julie for happy hour at the Madhatter in Dupont - my favorite neighborhood in DC, and a great bar that I'm starting to enjoy rather muchly. Julie and I had not made plans to meet up a week ago or even the day before. It was a meeting that was arrange by text message about three hours earlier.
I wonder if deep down inside the London terrorists prompted my desire to see her.
When I was at the Dave Matthews concert last month a friend exclaimed, Well maybe if you stay in one place something will happen for you! I had never thought of this. Stay in one place? Settling in? Letting things move as they will around you?
"I mean you're in Baltimore, then LA, then DC," the friend continued.
"Before that, London..." I said, and the friend looked at me slightly confused.
Lots of people forget that I lived there. Lived in the sense that it was a study abroad program, but it was living nonetheless since school was just something we went to twice a week. People always say in their little cliche way, Studying abroad will change your life. They mention the culture, the food, the politics, blah blah. All that's well and good, but what happens - or what's happened to whoever I know who has studied abroad - is that they get branded. It's as if someone stuck out an iron and reached deep down inside you and just held it there for months. When you come back, that branding is always with you. You look back to the place where you studied abroad and can pin-point that it was there when your life changed. Your world has become too big, and you only want it to become bigger.
So you cannot stay still.
And even if you do physically stay still your mind is packing bags and sending you to San Francisco, the Peace Corps, Americorps, Thailand, China, Prague, Los Angeles, New York - anywhere but where you came from.
A few days ago my good friend Joe announced that he's moving to Thailand. Two years ago when he announced he was moving to China, it was a huge deal. I was shocked, curious, wrote a huge, beautiful (if I must say so myself) essay about him, I drove all the way from Baltimore to Old Town Alexandria to hang out with him. I cried on the drive home. His announcement that he was moving to Thailand warmed me in a different way. He leaves in two weeks. Only Joe would pack his bags that fast and move halfway around the world.
Joe, Julie and I met in London. We never seem to be in the same cities, but somehow we've gotten really close as time has gone on. They are who I turn to with the hardest post-collegiate angst issues. I know they "Get-it" on a level bigger than most people. They're branded, like me.
Last night Julie and I ate nachos and drank vodka tonics for four hours - from when the news went from the new London bombings to the Nats game. We just glanced at the TV briefly during the bombing segment and didn't say anything about it. I knew she knew it like I did. The photographs weren't photographs of a great city - or sister city - on the other side of the Atlantic. The coverage was from what was once Home... the Underground we'd ride together every day, the buses we jumped on, the transportation system we fell deeply in love with. We have the inside jokes about Minding the Gap, and stories about how strangers would stop us to tell us there was a bomb on the train. We know why there are no trashcans in the Underground, we know the bombing sites without looking at the maps they put on TV.
We talked about Joe, briefly, and smiled. Then, somehow, we told each other like a little secret that we no longer want to travel the world like that, and, somehow in the last three years we have become comfortable with the fact that we want a home. I, for one, am sick of packing boxes. We need our Place.
It all brings up a question I've been mulling over recently - one that goes back to that one passing comment at the Dave Matthews concert. Is it the going that keeps you learning, growing, or is it the return?
Joseph Cambell would argue that it's both - the hero journey out into the world to come back to where you once started. Joe would argue it's the going. My friend Sabrina would say it's staying (as she mentioned in her blog yesterday the following idea - among many - she's recently pondered, "Sell everything I own and travel the world in an attempt to 'find myself' like the white kids do." I laughed out loud because, well, it's true. In the last year and half I've sold my TV, my car, my laptop...to travel.)
Julie and I ordered another round after our first few and came up with the mature conclusion, that I'm sure I will come to completely embrace some day - that no matter what you choose, you must own your decision and really, really, truly not care what anyone else thinks, and really really truly believe you are making the right choice for yourself.
Living in Thailand, for example, does not interest me. Having a free place to stay when I visit Thailand most certainly does. And that is what we know today.
I wonder if deep down inside the London terrorists prompted my desire to see her.
When I was at the Dave Matthews concert last month a friend exclaimed, Well maybe if you stay in one place something will happen for you! I had never thought of this. Stay in one place? Settling in? Letting things move as they will around you?
"I mean you're in Baltimore, then LA, then DC," the friend continued.
"Before that, London..." I said, and the friend looked at me slightly confused.
Lots of people forget that I lived there. Lived in the sense that it was a study abroad program, but it was living nonetheless since school was just something we went to twice a week. People always say in their little cliche way, Studying abroad will change your life. They mention the culture, the food, the politics, blah blah. All that's well and good, but what happens - or what's happened to whoever I know who has studied abroad - is that they get branded. It's as if someone stuck out an iron and reached deep down inside you and just held it there for months. When you come back, that branding is always with you. You look back to the place where you studied abroad and can pin-point that it was there when your life changed. Your world has become too big, and you only want it to become bigger.
So you cannot stay still.
And even if you do physically stay still your mind is packing bags and sending you to San Francisco, the Peace Corps, Americorps, Thailand, China, Prague, Los Angeles, New York - anywhere but where you came from.
A few days ago my good friend Joe announced that he's moving to Thailand. Two years ago when he announced he was moving to China, it was a huge deal. I was shocked, curious, wrote a huge, beautiful (if I must say so myself) essay about him, I drove all the way from Baltimore to Old Town Alexandria to hang out with him. I cried on the drive home. His announcement that he was moving to Thailand warmed me in a different way. He leaves in two weeks. Only Joe would pack his bags that fast and move halfway around the world.
Joe, Julie and I met in London. We never seem to be in the same cities, but somehow we've gotten really close as time has gone on. They are who I turn to with the hardest post-collegiate angst issues. I know they "Get-it" on a level bigger than most people. They're branded, like me.
Last night Julie and I ate nachos and drank vodka tonics for four hours - from when the news went from the new London bombings to the Nats game. We just glanced at the TV briefly during the bombing segment and didn't say anything about it. I knew she knew it like I did. The photographs weren't photographs of a great city - or sister city - on the other side of the Atlantic. The coverage was from what was once Home... the Underground we'd ride together every day, the buses we jumped on, the transportation system we fell deeply in love with. We have the inside jokes about Minding the Gap, and stories about how strangers would stop us to tell us there was a bomb on the train. We know why there are no trashcans in the Underground, we know the bombing sites without looking at the maps they put on TV.
We talked about Joe, briefly, and smiled. Then, somehow, we told each other like a little secret that we no longer want to travel the world like that, and, somehow in the last three years we have become comfortable with the fact that we want a home. I, for one, am sick of packing boxes. We need our Place.
It all brings up a question I've been mulling over recently - one that goes back to that one passing comment at the Dave Matthews concert. Is it the going that keeps you learning, growing, or is it the return?
Joseph Cambell would argue that it's both - the hero journey out into the world to come back to where you once started. Joe would argue it's the going. My friend Sabrina would say it's staying (as she mentioned in her blog yesterday the following idea - among many - she's recently pondered, "Sell everything I own and travel the world in an attempt to 'find myself' like the white kids do." I laughed out loud because, well, it's true. In the last year and half I've sold my TV, my car, my laptop...to travel.)
Julie and I ordered another round after our first few and came up with the mature conclusion, that I'm sure I will come to completely embrace some day - that no matter what you choose, you must own your decision and really, really, truly not care what anyone else thinks, and really really truly believe you are making the right choice for yourself.
Living in Thailand, for example, does not interest me. Having a free place to stay when I visit Thailand most certainly does. And that is what we know today.
posted by AllDeTime at 11:49 AM
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