Cultural Relativity

I have to admit that I still struggle in explaining to people the real reason for this sabbatical. There are multiple reasons I've probably covered before: more time to share as a family; learning a language; taking a break from the rat race… But the one that's most important and most difficult to relate is hoping to give our kids a better perspective on our own culture by leaving it and seeing what else is out there.

We've seen loads of preteens with mobile phones texting so they don't have to "deal" with whatever (church, class, dinner guests); young girls wearing shorts with impossible geometries providing uncomfortable revelations; boy scouts earning merit for mastering video games. And yes, it is our responsibility and power to educate, discipline, and control our children, but I think it's just naive to think our parental influence has trump power over the wicked stew of hormones, mores, and opportunities “kids these days” are exposed to. We are all human—kids more so. And we rationalize our environments by what we see before us. Children have no perspective and will realize that whatever wisdom we seem to have, whatever experience we claim, whatever authority we wield, everybody else in the world [as they know it] is doing and telling them something different.

The evidence and influence is stacked against us...here. There (and in this case There is Ecuador) we have two things going for us. First, it's different and not quite so bad culturally in many of the ways we believe the U.S. is. They just don't have the wealth to escape reality as we do. Not as much anyway. But it does, as any culture does, have its problems. But our second advantage is that it is foreign to us, or we are to it, as you like. And that, we have heard many families who have gone this route say, creates a stronger bond, a greater need for each other. Our daughter might still see a twelve-year-old walking down the street with her butt cheeks popping out of her shorts at every step while she talks on her mobile phone crossing a busy street. She might still see lots of them. But there she is much more likely to see that as an oddity (as she will likely see most things) rather than an aspiration.

Or at least that's the bet.

But I have recently found a quote from Kurt Vonnegut that says very well what I seem to have trouble saying to people, at least so that they get it.

And it is...

"I've often thought there ought to be a manual to hand to little kids, telling them what kind of planet they're on, why they don't fall off, how much time they've probably got here, how to avoid poison ivy, and so on...and one thing I would really like to tell them about is cultural relativity. I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it."

Thank you, Mr. V. And if you still don't get it, you're perfectly fine where you are: we'll send pictures.

Every Family's Got One

My brother is staying with us while the restraining order is in force. This is a first occurrence for my brother and was a ridiculous application of law enforcement. It should not reflect badly on his character, which, though flawed, is generous and fun. But it also doesn't surprise those of us who know him. It has been said of we three siblings that Chris is the smartest, and while it does call into question exactly what "smart" means, that is arguably true.

Which goes nowhere in explaining how he has (so far) ended up jobless and purposeless. Having just written that sentence, I think I might transpose "jobless" with "purposeless" and begin getting to an explanation. I don't want to be new-agey and preachy, and though I have been through the "purpose" boot camp in my personal and professional lives, I don't think Purpose is all quite as neat and tidy and tied up in a best-selling dust jacket as it was presented to me in those lives. I still can't recite my Special Purpose from memory (yes, it's written down), as I don't think I truly understand what it means, practically speaking. But I do have a visceral sense of purpose that I believe I follow most of the time.

While my brother may say this life sucks, so what's the point, I'm not sure he believes it. In my advanced age I'm still not sure what "the point" is, but I do think that whether life sucks or not is just a an individual choice. The beauty of aging is that nearly every experience, if you're really paying attention, shows you that you were wrong about something, and that after all these Being Wrongs, you are probably no worse off, and potentially better off, than you were before. And so what you eventually learn, if you're paying attention, is that having some sort of preconceived notion--a belief--doesn't do you a spit of good.

When you live in a house you pay no rent for, eat food you don't buy, watch a television all day you don't own, don't work or pay taxes...life is going to suck, no matter what you believe.

Or, alternately, when you have a monthly rent you have to pay, have to go shopping and cook food, have to pay a cable bill and buy a new digital TV, work 40 hours a week that you only bring home 80% of your wages from...life still sucks.

Or...not. The difference in the two scenarios is not the scenario, it's the choice at the end. Life is what it is. Choose life. Life is beautiful. There's just one life to live.

I talk to my brother and throw every platitude I've got at him and I realize the whole thing's just for me anyway, because there's nothing I can do to help him. And I realize that, as I let go of the sadness of such a beautiful person withering away, it is always easier to speak truth to another than to oneself. Purpose is not a profession, nor a direction, a decision, a skill, a path, a destination...Purpose is embracing life, and honesty, and engaging others and one's own mind and spirit, and exploring, and loving fearlessly.

My brother, and many others, and still me, await their purpose in the mail. Or on the infomercial. In the classifieds. Special Opportunity for the Right Person. Unlimited Revenue Potential. Set your Own Hours. Be your Own Boss.

No matter what we believe this sabbatical will "give us," what we get out of it will be what we take out of it.

My Special Purpose

I’ve begun to suspect that either our goals or our evaluation standards may be flawed. When you are looking to clear out the house and get really excited about going through two old bottles from the liquor cabinet, has your eye slipped off the prize? Why is now the time to finish off what hasn’t earned the touch of my tongue since my bachelor days? I’ve got bottles of booze in there from 15 years ago. If I didn’t drink it back then, what is going to appeal about some mystery blue liqueur now?

Maybe that’s it: we’re separating the grain from the gross. Tonight we just finished off a bottle of decent tequila and a bottle of Cointreau, both of which had just splashes left. The kids are going to their grandparents this entire coming week, though, and I wonder what wickedness may come if we start out a week without children thinking we need to thin the booze herd. This is our week to get things done, so a little focus is required.

I may just be having a little short-timers guilt. I haven’t (yet) become completely useless at work, knowing I have no responsibility to the job in 11 weeks. And I own this job anyway, so I’m actually working harder now to try to get things in shape for my replacement. But I realized the other day that I’ve been fantasizing about leisure. I will learn Spanish in a hammock. I will learn guitar by a river. I will spend hours a day cooking with my wife. I will play with my children to exhaustion.

And no matter what else the angel on my shoulder says, I will continue to have lustful thoughts of leisure. But I’ve been realizing that this trip is primarily to give our children perspective on our culture at home, and get lessons in life that they might not otherwise get at home. So we don’t want to be teaching our children that leisure is the ultimate objective of life, or that you can give up work and responsibility to get it.

I assume that I, possibly we, will get engaged in the community in more than a social way. But what is to ensure that? That is, what will we end up doing without having some explicit purpose to this adventure?

Di’s mom suspects we are doing this to scratch our own travel itch, and not for the beneficent and patronly reasons we believe. And if we do launch without first having set our minds to some expectation of what we get out of this, then she may turn out to be right.
Now, just where is that special purpose?

Willful Abandonment of Comfort and Joy

We can’t know what things we will discover about ourselves or our culture on this sabbatical, but we know already some things that we will miss. We even seem to be preemptively missing some of them before we go.

The other night we made fine use of our gracious, dependable, and comfortable built-in babysitters. Di's parents are both near to us and amazingly helpful and generous people. It was not long before this night that we had the “sit-down, this-is-real, we're-really-going” talk with them. We had dropped the possibility in conversation several times before, and they did watch the kids for most of the time we did our two-week scouting trip. You can't say that this was a real surprise to them, but given the kind of people that both Di and I are, you also can't blame them for holding out hope that we just had burrs in our saddles that we had to work out...fantasize a little...catalog shop...and then come back to earth and stay in Minturn.

So it may still have been a dash of cold reality in the face. We're taking their grandchildren away from them for two years. Even if they do come down to visit, it will be far less time with the kids than they have now, and far more work to have it. And they aren't feeling quite as springy in the step as they once did. And the thought of a primitive, third world South American country must be daunting.

They are shining examples of postwar America, the product of the Greatest Generation: unwavering values, dependable friends and neighbors, generous but modest, hardworking. And they have a comfort in life unprecedented for a middle class in human history, that was certainly earned for all those listed reasons and more.

Everything that postwar America brought to us and the world--all that comfort, clear reward for hard work, a chicken in our pot and a car in our garage--we're eschewing for...what exactly?

But Bill and Jan are not people to interfere or criticize, no matter how crazy or inconceivable an idea might seem to them. So they grin and bear it…and pray that we'll come to our senses. Our hope is that they do come visit, realize what a wonderful place Ecuador really is, and decide to stay longer. We are both hoping against each other's nature, I suppose. But we hope.

That night out that Bill and Jan gave us was spent out for a friend's birthday dinner on the patio of a favorite restaurant. Charlie's family was there as well as some friends we knew and some we met that night. It was simple, engaging, relaxing, friendly, and dozens of other adjectives that we know we will have a harder time finding in Ecuador, where we have no such friends, relationships, or even the ability to so easily converse in the same language.

But because we know we will miss evenings like this, we already appreciate them more. And it is one thing to imagine, but another thing to live. So we are embracing the challenge of not having those things, and the other things we will miss but have not even imagined yet. And we are also excited for the unexpected inspirations and undreamt of discoveries. It is this willful abandonment of comforts and joys that we know, for the challenges and surprises we don't know, that gives us confidence in pursuing lives less ordinary.

The Scouting Trip: The Coast

Before arriving in Ecuador the coast was our primary target for a home. Upon arriving we learned that services, particularly schools, were fairly lacking in any of the places we wanted to be. So, though we’d already written it off as a potential home, hey look, we’re done scouting and we’ve got some time. Vamos a la playa!