Put me in my place

Increasingly, I’ve been feeling like my values are way out of step with those of the societies I’ve been living in.  I left the United States partly because I love traveling, partly because I wanted to try a job that felt more like helping someone (I couldn’t face up to one more second as a lawyer) but also because I felt like everything was for sale - even the health and happiness of small children has a price tag on it.  Especially that, because people will pay anything for it.  In Poland, it’s not quite there, but after their history with dictators, it feels like they’ve swung around and begun worshipping anything with the word ‘free’ in it: free market, free trade, free-for-all…Because America once looked like the promised land when they were younger, they’re determined to become that.   I used to look to the government for change, used to identify with liberals the world over.  Now I’m starting to feel that most world leaders are the same, wherever you go.  And I swear to God, as strange as this sounds, this has not made me a pessimist.  I still believe in people.  I just don’t believe in the systems.  The governments are corporations now, and you know how I’ve always felt about those, right?  

No, I’m not saying we’re irretrievably lost.  I’m wondering where the path is.  Where do you go when you feel like living your day-to-day life is a series of tiny contributions to something that you feel is genuinely appalling?  When all of those tiny contributions start to pile up and become mountains?  Lately I’ve been mentally stretching the threads from one puzzle piece to another (like a paranoid in the movies), and  I can see the connection between my dirt-cheap pair of jeans and the Haitian worker who’s trying to feed his children on 31 cents a day.  Between my bottle of water and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  Between my savings account and the commodities speculators who are starving families to death in Guatemala and elsewhere.  And I don’t like it.  I know I’m not actively supportive of these heartless billionaires, but I am supporting them just by living where I do, and having the things I have.  And there doesn’t feel like much of a way to live in the modern world without lending your support to them.

So my friend and I were debating this.  It seems like you have some choices, but there’s always a catch.  Part of me would like to wander off to the remote countryside, go back to nature, to the way life was a long time ago, and have a little farm.  Not much, just some fruits and vegetables, chickens, maybe a goat.  Enough to live on, without all the extra stuff.  Use environmentally-sound practices, and not hurt anybody.  Maybe help some people, in small ways – my neighbors, etc.  But then someone can point the finger and tell me I’m running away.  Burying my head in  the sand.  But if I stay put and try to fight it, I’m living in a place where most of the things I’ll use/come into contact with every day are part of the problem.  Where me and my privileged family are part of the problem.  Also, it’s beyond frustrating to always be fighting.  It’s one of the reasons I quit the law.  I wanted a life, not a constant battle.  And this fight is enormous.  It seems impossible sometimes.  Do I just try to find a country whose values are at least a bit closer to mine, raise some children there, and accept that it’s good enough?  Move to the “third-world” and live a life of service?  Work some kind of middle ground between escaping it completely and staying for the fight?  Is there one? 

I know I have some friends who feel the way I do.  What do you do?  How do you square your life with your beliefs?  What feels right to you?  Because for me, I’m really not sure anymore.  Most likely, if I keep up the way I am, I’ll stumble about for a bit longer and then “end up” wherever I am when I decide to get married, have kids.  And then make the best of it for those children.  Maybe that’s ok.  Maybe it’s even what most people do, and I’ll make peace with it when/if it happens.  From here, though, it feels like the kind of thing that should be a choice, not just a hole you fell into when you weren’t looking.

[A few notes: This entry was hard to write.  In more than one way.  First, it’s a hard topic to even wrap my head around some days, so I’m sorry if it didn’t make a lot of sense.  Also, I know some people might feel that this is somehow a judgment about their lives.  (So let me get this out there: it’s honestly not.  I know that my values and desires are different from other people’s.  This is a reaction to thoughts I have about living my life in accordance with my personal value system.)  Finally, it’s hard to write because I feel that this blog can be a bit heavy sometimes, and as a matter of vanity, I want people to think of me as cheerful and pleasant, not preachy and bleak. But I write when I need to untie knots for myself, so I guess it’s bound to be messy.  Hope you don’t mind too much.]