Yesterday I showed Martha a house in France I like. I’m guessing many couples play this “what if” game, trading listings of places in far-flung locales to which you will almost certainly never move, but which sound so lovely that the mere mention activates the wanderlust gene. This particular house had a pool and four bedrooms and was just outside Montpelier in the south. Perhaps we could move to France! Or to Italy, perhaps a place in the Umbrian hills.
I think we should do it.
We only moved to Savannah less than three years ago and we both like it a lot. So why would we move? We wouldn’t, I don’t think, but it’s fun to fantasize about a life unlived. The Scandinavian Escape. The Portuguese Idyll. The Costa Rican Take-Off.
What would we even do in those countries without friends or family? I suppose we could make friends and start a throuple? Or maybe we could split our time between the Old World and New. The possibilities seem endless, the only roadblocks being money, career, language skill, various immigration laws, and loneliness. Also, the surety that whatever problems we’re trying to escape here would almost certainly follow us there. So there’s that.
The upside, of course, is that America is in freefall and while every nation has its problems, one doesn’t necessarily feel the same urgency to deal with domestic crises when the nation in question isn’t one’s own. That’s how it felt when we lived abroad last year in a lovely state of obliviousness. Yes, obliviousness is a privilege of the well-to-do but if you’re going to have a fantasy, why include local gripes?
The conversation with Martha yesterday was talking about the circumstances under which we would move. There weren’t any, really, at least for the moment. “What if Trump wins again?” I asked.
“Oh, then absolutely,” she responded.
But I doubt we would go even in that unfortunate scenario. What are we going to do – abandon our nation when she needs us most? Hell yes I would. But that’s not the issue. I just meant that, every election season, lots of people threaten to leave the nation if their preferred candidate doesn’t get elected, but the truth is, very few of them actually do it. The thought of uprooting from one country and landing in another is daunting, to say the least. And we at least have enough money to land on our feet somewhere. What about all the people risking life and limb to come to this country? I imagine a lot of them did what I did, got online and looked at houses on Zillow and thought, One day.
They’re escaping poverty and corruption and drug cartels. They’re leaving everything they know to give themselves and their children better lives. I would be moving because “it looks pretty.”
Ugh. Why can’t I even have a fantasy that doesn’t involve guilt?
Even so, it’s fun to imagine a different sort of life in a different sort of place. How would I even spend my days in Italy? Perhaps not that differently than I spend them here. Get up with the sun, work in the fields all day, then practice my Latin by candlelight until bed in the hopes of one day becoming a big city lawyer.
Strictly speaking, I don’t exactly spend my time in the States in that manner, but the larger point is the same: you can change your setting but you can’t change who you are. Who I am is a guy that drinks a lot of tea and writes half-baked blog posts for the amusement of strangers. I’m also a guy who has never worked in a field a day in his life apart from some autumnal apple picking with the kids, which definitely counts.
Life is a foggy journey with a bad map. We poke around in the mist trying to find the best route but how are we to know? We can’t. But we try. That’s what I think is going on with me when I crank up my computer and check out foreign real estate listings. The hope is that, if I can just find the right house in the right place, whatever troubles I have will evaporate. It’s the old misbegotten idea that happiness is to be found without instead of within. Sure, maybe the lavender fields of Provence are the single missing piece that will complete my joy. But I kind of doubt it. Perhaps not even a bowl of fresh-made cacio e pepe will do that. Instead, I suspect we trundle our joy with us from place to place, just as we do with our burdens. Better, maybe, to get myself straight in the place where I am before disrupting my life again, only to learn again that no matter how far I go, I cannot escape myself.
But the hills of Umbria do sound lovely, don’t they? Even if we cannot move out of our own heads, we can at least distract ourselves for a few minutes with a glass of bright red on a warm day, my love in the giardino picking basil for the evening meal, the tinkle of sheep bells in the distance. Che bello.
“Instead, I suspect we trundle our joy with us from place to place, just as we do with our burdens.”
The eloquence of statement moved me (no pun intended). It’s both poignant and heartening.
“Ugh. Why can’t I even have a fantasy that doesn’t involve guilt?”
I feel seen.