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January 09, 2005
Voyage
Nathalie and I went out to eat last night, hiring a 17-year old babysitter to watch the children. It's a real relief to eat without three small people disrupting you regularly throughout the meal, even at a restaurant without much intimacy and with a few people smoking while you're in the middle of your food.
Our children are still so young we can answer every sensible question they ask. That's not true of a 17-year old. Our babysitter is preparing a year abroad in Australia. In many ways she seems quite ready to go. She appears to have thought about it considerably more than I thought about going abroad before I left for Germany. In listening to her speak, however, I got the distinct impression that she doesn't fully appreciate what she's signing herself up for: A whole year in a foreign land without seeing her family, friends, and familiar faces, 3-4 host family changes, the inevitable first-year roller coaster of culture shock. On the one hand, our youthful naivete can lead to dangerously stupid stunts like 4 adolescent boys out driving around trying to crush empty beer cans under the rear wheels with the car rolling. On the other hand, it makes us psychologically limber enough to take a year-abroad plunge. Audacity has a hard time shining through a 30-year-old build up of doubt and cynicism.
Nathalie said her natural reaction as a mother would be apprehension. As a father, I'd feel apprehension, but the stronger feelings are of hope and of mortality. The older and more humble you get, the better you see the need for the foolhardiness that lets us embark on new adventures. You also see challenges beyond the personal, like fixing a broken world in which success comes to those implementing Machiavelli or Sun Tzu. Yet you know the chances of doing anything both worthwhile and large before you die are tiny.
Posted by Mark at January 9, 2005 06:37 AM