What do we want? Are we really globetrotters?

A friend remarked on my last post, a friends who’s in the same position, as in she doesn’t know where she’ll be next year or what she’ll be doing, and commented that as she might not be yearning for a car & a house like myself, she’s still hoping for a comfortable outcome. Something definitely needs to be clarified here, and it’s that although I’m dreaming of a good life, I’m not necessarily hoping for those two things specifically. Cars pollute. I think more than anything, they represent something that I once in a while wish we had: stability. I say once in a while, because when we moved from Belgium, this is exactly what we chose not to have, but opted for a leap into the unknown instead; a limited-term contract in Egypt. Neither Courtney nor I ever thought of ourselves as globetrotters or expats, international residents, but small-town people, that like to grow their own potatoes and ‘go into town’ on a Saturday. Yet, in retrospective, I suppose we’ve chose to lead that other life; at least for now.

Whenever I go ‘home’ – back to the place where I grew up – and I go into town, I get the same certain feeling; that I missed out. I made it too complicated for myself. I see my old friends and acquaintances that never left town for university studies, years abroad, or to marry a foreigner, but stayed, married that cute older brother of someone we knew, got a nice job, bought a house, a car, had kids, and started their lives – good lives - immediately. When I come home now, their kids are already teenagers, and they go on Kiel-weekends alone. They get to go to the same bank, same shops, and restaurants as we did when we were kids. They rent their movies from the same place, have dinner parties with people we’ve known all our lives, even play soccer for the same team, and skate on the same ice. They lead stable and, in my eyes, very exciting lives. They get to be grown-ups in that familiar environment we dreamed of being grown-ups in when we were little. Isn’t that what we all wanted?

These friends, I imagine, listen to my stories with half admiring, curious looks – half disgusted, and probably think that I am the one leading the more exotic life, but really; why make it so complicated?

Well folks, you’ve heard this rant before. I keep coming back to it, whenever it is time for us to take another step. Is that what I want for us: the house, the car, the recurring vacations, and a simple yet good job? What do you think?

Note: courtesy of Facebook, I am, nowadays, able to get a much more visible glance of the lives my friends lead back home. And the grass is always greener, isn’t it? There’s something about Facebook that makes everyone’s lives look so exciting, and I like it!