The other day, I was reading through various Facebook things (I so hate how that site has the ability to catch my attention) and I found an interesting post. My sister wrote some status update about how her boyfriend is in Europe, her best friend is in New Zealand, and her sister (that's me) will soon cross the Atlantic again. She wondered, with all of these traveling people around her, why she is still here. I don't know how much she meant by it. I don't know if she meant that she wanted a vacation or that she wants to travel in general or that she feels like she's gotten stuck here. I don't know. I won't ask. But the post was there and I was sort of flattered to be included in her thoughts about traveling/travelers.
Comments flowed, as they always do. Some encouraging her to see the world. Others telling her that she'll find her time to do all these things as well. Uplifting, mostly, and all on her side. And then I saw something weird. I saw my name in one of them. I read further and found a comment made largely about me. A friend of ours told her that she wasn't traveling because she had good sense to save money and be stable in an unstable job market. Because she didn't feel the need to "keep up with the Joneses" the way I, apparently, do. He then said, "No offense, Jamie, I just don't think you'll ever be happy staying in one place."
Whoa.
My first response was defense. I was stung and wrote some prickly retort about not being satisfied with watching the whole wide world exist inside a television screen. I have had to defend this to people before. Career-driven people, mostly. I find that people either envy what I do or look down on it, believing it to be a juvenile escape from the reality of those picket fences and digital bathroom scales that I so abhor. I'm used to this assumption and have calculated decent defenses for every version of it.
But this was new. "You'll never be happy anywhere?" Is that true? I wonder. I haven't found anywhere I want to stay forever, and I've lived in three of the most beautiful places the US has to offer. Three places people often migrate to, not out of. Three places people go on vacation and ooh and aah about how they wish they could live there. I've left two without so much as a tear and plan to leave this one before a year is up. I have decided to move to the Pacific Northwest, but the plan is not to stay. The plan has never been to stay.
So what's wrong with that? Is there anything wrong with it at all? When he said "No offense," he clearly thought that offense could be taken. He clearly even meant it that way. Have I doomed myself to a life of dissatisfaction? Of always wondering if there is somewhere better? I am wondering even now if there is somewhere better than where I'm sitting, and I am happy where I'm sitting. Where I'm sitting is beautiful and perfect. Yet I am sure that there is somewhere more beautiful and more perfect. Yeah, that's a better was to put it. I'm not always wondering if there is some place better; I am always sure that there is.
I'm not sure if this scares me or excites me. I suppose those two things feel very much the same and even are the same in a lot of circumstances.
Should I be looking for a cure or thanking the universe?
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