Moving to the other side of the world requires that you stop blogging for two months. Not sure if you knew that.
I just noticed that my last post was titled "homeward bound" which incidentally is also one of the great films of my childhood. Michael J Fox is brilliant even when he is voicing a dog and I cried at the end when Shadow finally shows up at the crest of the hill no matter how many times I watched it. Those triumphant orchestra scores get me every time.
Ryan and I are home now. Michigan has been stubbornly holding on to the cold and rainy weather in what I believe is an effort to punish us for leaving. We spent 10 days in LA visiting my brother Jais and other friends in the area. My parents flew in as well so we could all check out Jais' new LA life. After that Ryan and I spent a week in Seattle visiting friends that we had not seen in much too long. There was heaps of rain but that's okay because every other time we've been in Seattle the weather has been stunningly beautiful. I somehow felt that I wasn't ever experiencing the real Seattle and this trip rectified that. Finally we flew to Detroit and have been slowly settling in the past few weeks. Since arriving in the states we've been really crummy about taking pictures. I'll post a few. I feel redundant posting them since they're already on facebook but I have some friends (or one friend rather = Liz) who follows my blog but doesn't use FB.
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| Ryan and I in LA with our luggage... which grew from our backpacks to include the carry-ons... partially because of food we wanted to bring back with us. Going to have to slim down before heading out again. |
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| Ryan noticed that the Academy Awards were scheduled for the day after we all flew in so we went to see what we could see... we inched our way up to almost the front by the fences. See Oscar? |
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| Colin Firth, Amy Adams, Robert Downey Jr, Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett (I am quite sure but didn't realize at the time), Donald Trump....and a handful of others. |
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| We went to the Price Is Right and my brother got called down at the beginning of the show. It was so so fun (you might not be able to tell my excitement from my face). We were right behind the bidders so we were on camera all through the show! |
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| Jais with Drew Carey (who is no Bob Barker I might add). He got on stage near the end of the show and ended up with about $2,000 and some prizes. |
I'm excited about spending the summer in the states. I have definitely dealt with some culture shock since getting home. More so than last time I came home. There is something about western culture that seems to creep into people's spirits and maybe it's more obvious when you've been away....the way perfume smells strong at first. There seems to be this underlying struggle with disconnectedness and discontentedness. I want to live with connection and contentedness and American culture is masterful at robbing that away.
One of my favorite books is called The Geography of Bliss. The author Eric Weiner is a NPR reporter and he wonders why the people in some countries rate so high in happiness while others don't. So he travels around to determine what makes the happiest countries so happy or the miserable countries so miserable. Weiner refers to a study which ranks the U.S. as only the 23rd happiest country. Which is interesting to me because when I talk to some people in America there seems to be an underlying, strongly held belief that we are better off or have a superior approach to life than the people in most other countries.
The author makes a number of fascinating observations and discoveries but what he finds to be one of the most consistent indicators of happiness is sense of community and belonging. This book got me thinking about how much our culture impacts our values, what we think is good. I think American culture is historically steeped in the cowboy complex....believing that a strong individual who can pull themselves up by the boot straps and handle their own problems is more virtuous than someone who is co-dependant on others. For example, we think it's embarrassing for older people to live with their parents because it means they are lazy (which is certainly what I tend to think)....even though in many cultures generational families always live together and it is the honorable thing to take care of each other. There are benefits to both ways of thinking but just the fact that we are programmed to certain values is interesting. And I think the programming of our culture can make real community a hard thing to achieve.
Here's an excerpt from the book:
"The self-help industrial complex hasn't helped. By telling us that happiness lives inside us, it's turned us inward just when we should be looking outward. Not to money but to other people, to community and to the kind of human bonds that so clearly are the sources of our happiness.
Americans work longer hours and commute greater distances than virtually any other people in the world. Commuting in particular, has been found to be detrimental to our happiness as well as our physical health. Every minute spent on the road is one less minute than we can spend with family and friends - the kind of activities, in other words, that make us happy.
Political scientist Robert Putnam makes a convincing case in his book Bowling Alone that our sense of connection is fraying. We spend less time visiting family and friends; we belong to fewer community groups. Increasingly, we lead fragmented lives."
I guess one of the reasons I don't feel drawn to living in the states is I thrive on relationships and I know how hard it was for me personally to maintain a strong sense of community within our culture after graduating university. Working long hours isn't just for those trying to climb the ladder or keep up with the Jones'. When I lived in the states I consistently worked 60-70 hours a week for a $25,000 salary (before taxes). When I hear my friends talking about their jobs it seems pretty consistent that just about any American employer seems to think that we owe them our lives for our paycheck no matter how small it is. I used to beat myself up trying to find "balance" in my life until I left and was able to experience work in another country where I still had time and energy for relationships, for community. We were also able to actually build savings and take long periods off work to spend time with family/friends and pursue other interests (travel, volunteering, etc). I realized maybe the problem wasn't so much me not being able to balance as it was a culture where companies take all the best of our energy and leave us with very little left to invest in the true priorities of our life.
Discontentedness is something else I sense when I am at home. I don't have rich friends who are buying expensive houses or anything like that. Most of my friends are barely making ends meet. But advertisers are geniuses and we have been left (myself included) wishing we had more money so we could be less stressed and free not to worry so much.
"We give lip service to the notion that money can't buy happiness but act as if it does. When asked what would improve the quality of their lives, American's number one answer was money, according to a University of Michigan study."
BUT
"Recent research into happiness, or subjective well-being, reveals that money does indeed buy happiness. Up to a point. That point, though, is surprisingly low, about fifteen thousand dollars a year. After that, the link between economic growth and happiness evaporates."
I think this is why you hear about poor people in third world countries being happier than we are. Not if they are starving or cannot meet their basic needs of healthcare and education.....but after that money apparently doesn't impact our happiness. They have community while we have commercials. When I'm living in my bamboo hut at the Bamboo School in Thailand I'm satisfied with my backpack of possessions. But if I was living long term in America I'm just not sure how long I would last before the discontent would start crawling in.
To clarify, I do not mean to say that everyone in America is disconnected or discontented. Some people with different personalities than me can respond to the culture better than I. But in our case, the only option I see for living in the states with the connection and contentedness that Ryan and I have decided is a priority for our lives is possibly living in a type of communal environment where everyone works part time, invests in the local neighborhood together, has a community garden, shares expenses (like cars, etc)...something like that. And people do it in America and seem to make it work. I'm not sure if I would like it. Maybe I'll try it someday but I feel like it's an uphill battle in the midst of American culture and it's been easier for us in other cultures. I'm lazy I guess.
Well kids....given that I had no intention of even writing about this when I started this blog....I think I've said plenty for now.
