The irony of this title is not what I intended. I had a brilliant thought in the middle of the night last night and did what I always try to do, which is write it down. I captured it in a title for a new story and then for some reason I decided I did not need to even write down one line of that story to give myself a clue as to what I found so ironical at 3am. Now THAT is true irony.
So instead of writing with a distinct purpose this morning, I will write on the things that I find ironic in my life at the moment. By far, the biggest irony is that we are managing to have life go on when every day we read about the dismantling of our American government that has provided the foundation for the life we enjoy. I’ve always felt that we live under a blanket of security that only Americans have the benefit to feel. Anyone who has lived their entire life in the United States is probably not as viscerally aware of this as I am. As I’ve explained before, I spent 11 years of my 71 years living as an expatriate in four different countries. In my youngest years, it was all about missing things like television and ice cream. In my high school years, the things I missed were more subtle. They were institutions like summer jobs or the relative ease of getting a drivers license. And then as an adult, living oh so close to the U.S. in Toronto Canada, I saw the importance that America and its economic powerhouse played in the ability of the Canadian economy to prosper. In all of those time frames, the one constant that went perhaps unidentified, but never unappreciated, was the sense of security I felt being an American citizen, no matter where I was in the world.
The expatriate existence is something you have to experience to understand fully. Some people may love their foreign environment and want to stay there for the rest of their lives, somehow feeling that it’s a more commodious lifestyle than they might find in America, but I believe for most expatriates there is a sense of longing for home as often best seen in the annual Independence Day celebration that’s usually put on by the local American embassy. There is nothing so special about a hotdog or fireworks, but a hotdog provided by the American embassy at a picnic or a fireworks display on a tropical night in Costa Rica with the Star-Spangled Banner playing in the background, brings the patriotism of America into Sharp focus. I’m thinking that these Independence Day picnics at U.S. embassies might well be on the Republican chopping block at this point. I feel sorry for those young expatriates that will likely never feel what I felt in San Jose or Rome on those balmy summer nights. It saddens me to think that the institutions which have served America so well and that have been woven into my life and that of many others for the past 75+ years are so undervalued by today’s leadership. You notice I say leadership rather than citizenry because I’m not sure that the citizenry realizes the warmth they derive from that which the power-hungry populists are stripping away from them. While there are cultural aspects of the current environment that can and should be attributed to the citizenry, there are at least as many that are driven by the leadership and supported through large portions of misinformation to whip up the fervor of the crowd in support of them.
The next biggest irony I find myself confronting more and more with each passing day is the desire for, and yet burden of… travel. Kim and I share the view that we very much enjoy the planning and anticipation of our travels. And yet, the more we travel, the harder it becomes and the more we wonder why we do it so much if we are so happy to get home. I recall when I was working that I suffered a version of this. If I hadn’t traveled in awhile, I got itchy feet to hit the road. But on those Sunday afternoons when I was forced to pack a bag for a Sunday night departure for some distant place, I recall the feeling of ambivalence about leaving home and strapping on the travel gear. We have been saying for several years that we plan to travel less, and yet this year, once again, we are traveling at least as much or more with three international trips on the docket. Coming off a three week trip with only six weeks before we head off for the next three week trip has made us once again question the wisdom of our travels planning and promise ourselves that we will, indeed, aspire to travel less next year. But of course, that presumes that we do not get bitten by the travel bug yet again and forget our discomforts.
The third irony is the irony of work and leisure. I just had a bout of that during this recent trip. I got an assignment just as we were leaving. I used time on the trip, mostly during the sea days of leisure, to do the work and produce the required report in good and timely order. While in the process I had the opportunity to ponder the pull and tug of work and leisure. I have always valued work, but I prize my leisure as well. I am always surprised when someone who is retired is content to stay clear of anything resembling the work that they spent their careers doing. I understand being tired and wanting a change, but I cannot imagine not wanting to work. Despite that work orientation, I too am always torn about how much work I want at any moment. If it gets too busy, I wish for less. If it cuts into planned family activities, I wish for less. It I go for very long without an assignment, I wish for more. If I run a month without a dance card with some hours posted to be charged, I feel rather anxious and wonder when things will pick up again.
All of these ironies have a similar desire to have my cake and eat it too, as they say. I want to live in the moment and enjoy my life and yet I feel the need to worry about the world and specifically our country and the path that its on. I want to travel and enjoy the anticipation and yet I want to travel less and struggle less. And I want to work as much as I want and yet I want to not have to work whenever I would rather not. If that all sounds unreasonable, I agree it is. I suppose that these ironies are just a part of everyone’s life in one form or another, so perhaps the irony of it all is that we wonder about the ironies at all.