Friday, May 26, 2006

Finding Happiness

This post isn't actually about me. I'm not saying that I have or haven't found happiness. I'm not surfing my bliss, but I'm on the right track. This is more about whether you would stay in a place where there was no possibility of achieving what you want and need to be happy in your life. This is about an old and dear friend of mine that I can't seem to stop thinking and worrying about.

Try this on for size. You're living in a foreign country where the value system is counter to that which you were raised with and that which you have always aspired. What you want in life is to find the right person, settle down and have a family. Family is incredibly important to you because you come from a family where family was always a priority. You understand the sacrifices necessary for this and you're more than happy to make them.

However, you're living in a culture where people honestly believe that their goal in life is to suck as much pleasure out of it as possible. They don't need to plan for the future because the government takes care of things. College is free, students actually get paid to be in school, so there are no huge expenses to their parents and no student loans looming over young graduates. Women can and do have children on there own because the government will subsidize them and the father is forced to pay a fee whether he is actually a part of the child's life or not. Why bother getting married?

My friend wound up there because he married a woman from that country. He thought he had found his person. We all thought he had found his person and we adored her, if for no other reason than she adored him. We don't like her so much any more. She ended things and dragged it out, led him on, etc. etc. Basically broke his heart into a billion little pieces. We (his friends and family) suggested he come home, we asked him to come home, we begged him to come home. But he's still over there.

I can understand not wanting to go home. My world recently fell to pieces and I needed to leave where I was. I didn't want to go home. Luckily, I had a sister with a guest room halfway across the country!

There are people who leave and people who don't. No judgment call, it's just different types of people. My sister, me, this friend, we all left. Most of the people we grew up with never had any ambitions beyond getting to Boston. We were all beyond Boston the minute we graduated from high school. And after college we went even further. My sister chose Manhattan, I hit the world inside the beltway, and my friend managed to work on nearly every continent. After those things, going back to Boston feels like a failure. Not to mention that it's so damn expensive to live there! I'm not sure I could ever go back and my sister can only imagine going back if something happened to her husband and she was left alone with my nephew and the baby. But that's different, that's a catastrophe.

So is fear of failure enough to keep you in a place where you will never get what you need to be happy or be fulfilled? My sister says no. She says there has to be something there that he doesn't want to leave. Well, six weeks of vacation a year could be a definite motivator. Or maybe he doesn't realize that he's never going to find what he wants. It took me twice through his email to realize that. The first time I got caught up in the witty banter and the jokes and the reminders of our lives as teenagers. It was only when I reread it, needing to feel that light heartedness that I saw through to the truth. I doubt he's read what he wrote and saw what I saw; the harsh dichotomy of what he wants in his life and what the culture that surrounds him has to offer.

Inertia is a really powerful thing. I look back on my own life and try to see what it has taken for me to change course and usually it's been the floor falling out from under me. I've had my moments of bravery, usually followed closely by pure panic, but I try to do the things that scare me. They tend not to be so scary afterwards. I wish I could give him whatever it is he needs to move forward. I would. All he has to do is ask.

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