3.30am
Our western culture is so fixated on the fact that you must extricate yourself from your family.
- Moving out of home as soon as you start uni (isn’t this really a time when we want support from our family?).
- Being separate from them as soon as you finish high school. In fact, if you are not separate from them, then you are an oddity and people say, “well, she...is a bit of a recluse, has no friends, spends all her time with her family” as if it were the worst thing you could do or be.
- And travelling away from them, without them, and on your own.
I’m not saying it’s a particularly bad thing, it’s just something i observed. I mean, if you asked most people i think that you would find that family is the most important thing in their lives. So why do we go to such an extent to remove them from our lives, to be so far separate from them?
I say this particularly as though i think travelling alone is certainly “character building”, isn’t the real object of life to be happy? Because if i were truly honest, my happiness would obviously derive from my closeness to my family, my interactions with, and travelling alone – well it just plain makes me unhappy!
What i am saying is, i don’t think it’s a bad thing to travel with your family and the people you know. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to spend a lot of time with them. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to want to spend the rest of your life as close to them as possible – yet it seems that this is almost somewhat frowned on?
Who was that wise guy that once said “Happiness is only real when shared”?
Anyway, why am i up again only 4 hours since i last talked to you? ‘Cos i only got about 2 interrupted hours of sleep. I feel about 30 years older than i am. I have dark baggy eyes for the first time in my life. I am still running on empty, with a tumultuous gurgling tummy to evidence my extended fast.
It’s quite funny actually, on noticing when i used the bathroom earlier that all the water in the sinks, basins and shower gently spinning down the plugs in the opposite way to what i am used to. Of course, i do know about this northern/southern hemisphere thing, but it just feels so profoundly... wrong to me. Of all the things, i think this is what has most concreted the fact that i am 17 hours away from home, over the other side of the world, in the USA , and nowhere near anywhere or anyone i know. Funny, huh?
Later... On the plane to Hartford...
My first “American” meal with which i broke my fast this morning was a bagel and cream cheese. Pretty typically American I think. It was quite nice, however all the food i have seen, and, somewhat more importantly, smelled, has all been exactly the same. It’s like – no matter whether it’s a hot dog, chips, a hamburger, a salad or a “sandwich” (in quotation marks because they are actually more like twice the size of a sandwich) they all smell the same – this kind of appealing-but-not-so-appealing, MSG-laden, fast food-type smell.
Makes one a bit cautious, i have to say.
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I didn't leave home till I was 24 yrs old, and I went overseas first at 21, with 3 other friends. Anyway, its the fact change itself, not just the nature of the change, which is hard in the first place. Having someone to share the change makes it easier.
ReplyDeleteI have always found in our travels that there is both an element of "same" and "different" to the food I encounter. This was so even in Asia before MacDonalds make any appearance there (ie early 1980's)!
ReplyDeleteAlso on family - in many parts of the world today and in the past families lived together, often several generations, in one family compound or extended home. This is against our current western privacy, individualistic oriented lifestyles but does have several advantages. Shared resources - shared tasks and responsibilities, eg child rearing. Perhaps this is a more ecologically sustainable model for the future once again - back to the future!
Thanks for the comments - yes i agree change is easier with someone to help change with! Nevermind...
ReplyDeleteAnd yes mum, i mean, think of all those Italian families living in mountains and looking after their elders and sheep and making cheese and eating homemade wines and bread! Sounds so lovely :)
Also mum you would absolutely love it here - beautiful little wood houses and barns and woods and wildflowers in lush green paddocks, tiny picturesque towns...
Ill talk later! love to both of you, and the cats, hugs from e
I have been looking at photos of the area on the internet, as well as your photos, and you are right I would love it there - four seasons, rain so that plants grow! And I would also like living in Italy as you describe which sounds just ideal. With the right place larger groups sharing a home environment could provide both the privacy to do your own thing and the shared space to relax together over a meal, or cook together, grow food together etc. I have been reading a couple of blogs and websites on living in extended family or groups of friends (as students we all did that) to save money and other resources.
ReplyDeleteIn Japan (maybe you know) it is common to live with your family until you get married no matter how old you are. Also if you are the oldest son you would have to live with your family even after you get married.... And this our culture might have been one of the reasons made me travel to Australia living in a grany flat in anstead by myself a decade ago :) and also to Okinawa here too...
ReplyDeleteI see a lot of cultural difference between aus and us since i started working for us gov.
anyway ganbatte :)