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And I do feel a little different. A few things have conspired to push me in a bit of a different direction, which hopefully is a good thing.
The first is that Robyn and I will be leaving Luxembourg at the end of the year. Making a big change always produces seriously mixed feelings and this one is no exception. We have a pile of good friends in Luxembourg and we have had some glorious adventures in Europe. Why leave then...that is a hard question to answer. I think mostly because I listened to too much Bruce Springsteen when I was growing up.
"Baby this town rips the bones from your back, it's a death trap, it's a suicide rap, you gotta get out while you're young."
Ok, so that's quite melodramatic, but I think for me Luxembourg is so comfortable and easy that we could live here forever. It would be great to do so, but I would not be comfortable leaving so many other things undone. Not that I have in my mind to do great things, but I do have in my mind to do other things. And I would regret not doing them should we wake up thirty years from now in Lux.
There is also this Richard Burton quote that I fancy:
"One of the gladdest moments of human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of habit, the leaden weight of routine, the cloak of many cares and the slavery of home, man feels once more happy."
I think breaking routine is important. I always feel that I learn a lot and time slows down when we get away and do something entirely different. Maybe I am trying to pull a Dunbar from Catch22, but it seems to me this is a good thing.
There is a Steinbeck quote that I can never really remember that goes something like: I am not moving away from my friends, but I am moving towards friends that I have not yet met.
Or something like that.
So anyways, we are moving and that makes me see 2012 a little differently since I know this will be our last year here.
The second thing that adjusted how I see the world was our recent trip to Israel/Palestine. It is an odd and yet amazing place that really made me think.
When you are in Israel, it seems easy to forget the conflict. It all seems normal - shopping centers, freeways, asshole drivers, farms, etc. However, there are more subtle reminders that things are a little off. Glimpses of the wall from afar, metal detectors everywhere, cops asking Arab-looking kids for IDs.
You know that feeling when you were a kid just arriving to sleep over at a friend's house and when you walk in the door you know immediately that the entire family had just been at each other's throats. They did their best to cover it up and forget about it but there was just something in the air that betrayed them. That is the feeling I had in Israel/Palestine. The Palestinians are like the friend you were visiting in that he had no problem pulling you aside and describing to you in vivid detail how wretched his parents are. The mainstream Israelis on the other hand seem to address it a little more obliquely, like the mother who over dinner tells you how she is sorry the dinner was so late but she was busy cleaning up the mud that someone tracked in all over the house. Then there's the drunk abusive dad who was waiting for you to leave to beat the crap out of the mud-tracking son (those would be the fundamentalist settler Israelis). But then again, maybe the sleepovers I attended were a little odd.
Anyways, a week of this puts you in an odd place and caused me to think a great deal about the nature of conflict and the stupidity of people. It was really strange to sit on the Mount of Beatitudes above the Sea of Galilee - a sublimely beautiful spot with a view towards the West Bank and Syria - and think about the Sermon on the Mount. If people were acting back then as they are acting now, full of hate and emboldened by the words from ancient texts revealing that they were chosen above someone else, then I can see why Jesus got all fired up and tried to spell it out for them. Keep it simple, stupid. Just don't be a prick.
Hardly a religious experience, but that's the closest I think I will come.
Pete |
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