On Being an Expatriate - Part 1

I am an expatriate (expat), a person who lives in a country that is not his native land, a country in which he is not a citizen. Many people choose to live this way at some points in their lives, some for almost their entire lives. While most expats are just ordinary people, some very well-known people have been expats at some points in their lives. 

The Famous and Not-so-Famous

For example, the American author Ernest Hemmingway lived in Paris, while his contemporary, Henry James, chose to live in England. American actor Johnny Depp splits his time between France and the Bahamas, and British actor Roger Moore (James Bond of the 1970s) has lived in Switzerland for years. His predecessor as James Bond, Sean Connery, left his native Scotland for the more agreeable weather of Spain and then the Bahamas. American actor and producer Orson Welles went into self-exile in Europe for much of his life.

Those are just a few examples of famous expats. There are many others.  But the majority of expats are not famous at all. Since the second half of the 20^th century, more people have become expats for business reasons. I knew a number of guys – Americans and Australians – who chose to live in Peru or elsewhere in South America, mainly because of the work opportunities they had in engineering, environmental science or other fields related to mining. As you might expect, many met and married local citizens and decided to stay for love.

Why Live so Far from Home?

So, besides strictly for business, why do people choose to live an expatriate life?  For many, it is the lure of curiosity and adventure.  It is interesting to see new places, experience new climates and geography, get a feel for different cultures and ways of seeing the world, and of course, to meet and get to know diverse kinds of people.

Some thrive on the challenge of overcoming language barriers and cultural unfamiliarities to make their way. It bores them to do things the same old way at home. When they get to know a place too well, they might again feel the need to move on to a new place with new customs and new challenges.

There are those who decide to live in another country because they are fed up with their own country. Usually it is because the government has gone in a direction that they find distasteful. Many of these are people who put a high value on personal freedom, and when they feel that liberty is being suppressed at home, they seek it elsewhere.

A number of people leave their native lands because they feel lost in some way. They feel that they don’t exactly fit in or that there is something important missing from their lives. And their search to “find themselves” spurs them to see if their answers might be discovered in a mysterious foreign land.

A lot of famous expats have been artists or writers in search of inspiration or ways to expand their creative perspectives. Hemmingway might never have produced such significant works if he hadn’t spent his years as an expat in Europe. And I suppose a lot of hopeful artists and writers live the expat life seeking similar inspiration.

In more recent years, most expats are people who have been sent to overseas locations by their companies, or who took jobs with companies in foreign lands. A number of American and European executives and technical experts live in China or other countries. And the vast majority of the population of the thriving metropolis of Dubai is made up of expatriates from countries like India, Pakistan and the Philippines.

Expat or Immigrant?

Expatriates don’t give up their native citizenship; if they do that, they become immigrants. This is why we normally think of expats as those from advanced countries who live in less developed ones. People who go the other way are almost always immigrants looking for a better life. 

But an expat could well be someone from one advanced country, say, Canada, choosing to live for a time in an equally developed country like Japan, Germany or New Zealand. In fact two of the top expat destinations are Germany and the UK. And at the same time as the UK is a top expat destination, Brits are among the most common nationalities living as expats in other countries.

My Curious Case

So I am an expatriate. I’ve gone to some great lengths since early 2013 to be able to stay in Ukraine legally, but I am not about to give up my USSA citizenship. Things may have degenerated a great deal under the current socialist regime back there, but I have confidence that the nightmare will end eventually and my homeland will bounce back (meaning I’ll be able to drop the second “S”).

So I do expect to return… someday. Perhaps next year, maybe the year after. I could decide not to return to Ukraine from my vacation to Colorado next month. Who knows? Anything can happen.

But WHY am I an expat? Which of the reasons I listed apply to me?  Do any of them apply? Maybe I have a unique reason. Or maybe it’s some combination. Or maybe I don’t have a reason – maybe it’s just a matter of circumstance. Sometimes I think that I had a reason at first, but now I’m just here because I am here, and it seems to work. Or maybe I just haven’t thought of a better alternative recently.

Living Abroad

I’ve spent a good deal of my adult life outside the USSA. My first experience was living for 18 months on the lush, tropical island of Guam in the Pacific Ocean. It wasn’t exactly an expat life, however, because I was assigned there when I was in the U.S. Navy and lived most of the time on a Navy base (although I did live off-base for a few months in a little village). Plus, Guam is an American territory, so although the culture and people are quite different from what I had known before that, it was officially still the United States.

But those 18 months were an amazing experience. I changed so much during that time, partly because of living there but mostly because of events that happened around me. I probably had more experiences and lived life more fully – for better or worse – during that time than during any other period before or since. It certainly gave me an appetite for living in a totally different kind of environment.

After a year and a half spent mostly in California and Texas, I embarked on my six-year assignment to Japan. Again, this was not a true expat experience. I was still in the Navy and lived mostly on military bases. I did interact with local people quite a bit (I even taught English) and had a number of Japanese friends. But everything I needed, I could get on the American bases, any problems could be solved by the American authorities, and my usual, day-to-day life was pretty much American.

Again, an awful lot happened during those six years, and the experience changed me in many ways. Both of my daughters were born there. I climbed to the top of Mt. Fuji (twice) and spent 10 days motorcycling alone around the northern island of Hokkaido. And I lost a dear friend in a stupid, horrific car crash. I had a lot of highs and some terrible lows.

After a long stint living in Colorado (which is still mostly American) broken up by a couple of years in Massachusetts (which I think is still fairly American), I began working periodically in South America, mostly in Peru. Usually, these were working trips of about two or three weeks, but there was a time in 2004-05 when our team had an apartment in Lima, and I spent a month or more at a time.

I also had the opportunity to travel far and wide across Peru and to visit other places, like Chile, Bolivia and Argentina. I experienced the thin air high in the Andes, found myself surrounded by a huge herd of llamas in a high Andean valley, ate alpaca on a stick, braved the cold and snow of the windswept Patagonian plain, soaked up the sun on a Chilean beach in Jaunary (their summer), and attended an amazing, all-night Peruvian birthday party. This was closer to the expat experience, but because it was short-term, and I still maintained a home in Colorado, it was not truly the expat life.

It has been in Ukraine that I have truly become an expat. Between May 2007 and May 2008, I spent about half my time in Ukraine, and since May 2008 I have lived in Ukraine exclusively with only a couple of vacation trips back to the USSA to visit family and friends. That’s more than six years. Some of my closest friends are here, my work is here and my community is here.

It hasn’t always been easy. In fact, at times, it’s been very tough. But I’ve grown a lot here (and not just around my waist), and I know that I am a richer, wiser and better person for the experience. At this time, it’s hard for me to imagine living anywhere else. Yet I sense that my time here might be very close to the end.

What’s Next?

Of course, it usually IS hard to imagine something else until you have made the change and experienced it. I’ve thought about returning to the USSA, but maybe not until I can remove that extra “S.” And I’ve also thought that maybe I’d like to move to another European location. I’ve long dreamed about trying Ireland, and from my visits, I know that Switzerland is nice. But… I have no idea what I would do for a living in either place (or in the USSA, for that matter). Thus, I remain in Ukraine, at least for the time being.

Several times this year, Ukraine’s turbulent troubles have had me considering whether it was time to go. At one point in the spring, I even started making some contingency plans, because it wasn’t looking good in this part of the country. But the Kharkiv region has managed to remain calm, even as Russia and their “separatist” surrogates have brewed up a terrible war to the east of us.

Thus far, it has seemed that the danger has been kept far enough to the east that I don’t really need to feel any urgency about it. But things can change, so I do keep my eyes open and stay abreast of the latest news.

But even with all of this, I still think about the future here and what I can do to improve my work and life. I’ve been thinking about how to improve my own teaching skills, expand the reach of what I do, and bring new vitality to one of my client programs. And I’ve been considering how to renew my writing work, which has languished badly. More frequent blog writing has been a step in that direction.

There are many factors to consider in deciding “what’s next.” Perhaps the most important of these is people: family and close friends. But you can’t please everyone, so you just have to find the right balance. But most important, you have to do what’s best for yourself. That might mean staying here for years to come, or it might mean just not returning from my planned visit to the USSA in September. I'll know when I know.

Pros and Cons of the Expat Life

There are so many things to say on this subject. And this post is already quite long enough. So I’ll have to leave that for another time (Part 2). Actually, that was supposed to be one of the main themes of this blog, and I haven’t written too much about it. So I need to get cracking. I have started writing a piece about Ukraine (or maybe it will be about Kharkiv), that I am tentatively calling “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” It’s sort of a cliché name, I know, but it is very fitting.  That will be coming soon.

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Circles of Friendship

My two most recent posts were each written in a day, the second in one sitting, which is a refreshing change from the way my blog writing has usually proceeded for the past year or so. I have a number of posts that I started and haven’t finished, either because the inspiration failed me or I just got busy. Lately I’ve been trying to go back and complete some of them, like the one about my father.

Here is another that had been languishing unfinished… until today.

One of the more popular conversations themes I get into with my English conversation groups is on the topic of friendship. It includes some thought-provoking questions such as:

• Are friends more important than family these days?
• Do two people need to have a lot in common in order to be friends?
• Can a friendship last a lifetime?
• Did you have any imaginary friends as a child?
• Can men and women be “just friends,” platonically?

But perhaps the most interesting question is about the definition of a friend. What does this word really mean?

When asked to define what a friend is and how many friend they have, my students’ opinions are very wide-ranging. Some have a very limited definition of friendship, and as a result, report having few real friends. Others, however, use a looser definition and suggest that they have many friends.

What’s difficult, everyone agrees, is that it is very hard to categorize these relationships, because they exist at more levels of closeness and importance than we have words to describe them. We have the word friend, but that seems to cover everything from just a bit above acquaintance to a person who is intimately close.

So, in many cases, we are left with the word acquaintance, which describes someone whom you have met and know just a little bit, and the word friend, which seems to cover everything else. We also have the term best friend, but for many of my students, this is what friend means on its own. That seems to leave undefined a large number of people who impact our lives.

Best Friend?

Many people like to talk about having “best friends,” but the use of the term can create problems. When you announce that one or two people are your best friends, you eliminate from that category others who might be close and who might consider themselves to be among your closest friends. They can be hurt to learn that they are not as high in your estimation as they had thought.

And it can be awkward when you tell someone that he or she is your best friend, only to discover that the feeling is not completely mutual. It’s almost as bad as when you tell a girl (or a guy, if you are a girl) that you love her, only to see that uncomfortable, “I don’t know what to say” look in her eyes. When you’ve gotten up the courage to say those three little words, only to realize that they are less than welcome, well… it sort of makes you want to crawl off and hide under a rock for a millennium or two.

The Effect of Social Networking

The meaning of the word friend has been further diluted by its use in social networking. A person might have hundreds of “friends” on Facebook or similar sites, but how many of them would he or she call friends in real life? And how many social networking “friends” are just friends of friends, or friends of friends of friends? How many are just people trying to expand their contact network for marketing or other promotional purposes? A lot!

Nothing has cheapened the value of the word friend more than social networking sites. They should be called “contacts” or something like that… not “friends.” Friendship can only be assessed in the real world; what transpires online is “virtual,” which by definition is something falsely fabricated in a realm that doesn’t really exist.

Friendship over Time and Distance

Often in our lives, a person who was very close at one point moves out of your life. For a time, you do and share everything together, and it’s a true friendship. But then perhaps one of you moves away (distance). You try to keep in touch (and the Internet does help with that), but the distance changes things over time. You just cease being such integral parts of each other’s lives; other people enter and take up the time and closeness that the first person had. Things change, life goes on.

Alternatively, you might drift apart over time not due to distance but due to changes in life circumstances. This often happens, for example, when one gets married and starts a family, while the other continues living the single life. The conditions of their lives just don’t match up so closely anymore. Work, relationships and other factors can have similar effects.

In these cases, one of two things can happen: the friendship can fizzle out more or less completely, or it can shift to a kind of relationship where time and distance don’t really diminish its deepness. In the second case, the two people might not see each other for years and perhaps rarely communicate, but when they do have a chance to meet and catch up, the time seems to have disappeared and they are able to pick up almost where they left off.

Clearly the first case was not meant to be a lasting friendship, while the second obviously is. I have had the first case, of course, as have we all. And I have very good examples of the second. There are several people in the USSA whom I have rarely seen during my seven or so years in Ukraine, and with whom I communicate only by occasional FB message, e-mail or phone call. But when I do return, we pick up almost as though no time has passed.

Another post I am working on concerns the idea of soul mates and soul friends. These are kindred souls who come into each others’ lives repeatedly over multiple incarnations, and, thus, the bond is unusually strong. Perhaps if the friendship sort of peters out over distance and time, it means the person was not one of those individuals you are close to in the spiritual realm. And if you are able to maintain contact and closeness for years, even without seeing each other, the person really is one of your soul friends. I’ll explore that idea more when I finally get that post finished.

Circles of Friendship

Getting back to the matter of definition, I have always seen friendship manifesting as a series of concentric circles. I am at the center, of course, because it is my personal universe of friendship, and the people in my life have places on various circles around my center. For them, they are in the center, and I am someplace on one of their circles. The number of circles a person might count out from the center depends entirely on how that person views the nature of his or her friendships. Here is how I see it.

The innermost circle is where the closest people reside. These are the people with whom, at the moment, I have the most in common, spend the most time, share my deepest thoughts and feelings, and trust the most. We have the most mutuality. Some might call such people best friends, but as I said earlier, I don’t like to use that term except very privately.

There are never many people on this circle – maybe two or three at most. Often there is only one. If you are in a relationship, your partner should be on that circle; if he or she is not, there is a problem. And it has been my experience that often there might really be no one occupying a place on that circle; sometimes we are just at such a point in life when no one is really that close.

I don’t think I have ever really had more than two people on this circle, and for most of my time in Ukraine, I’d have to say there has been either one or none. Presently, I'd have to say that I'm not sure whether there is anyone on that circle or not... which probably means not.

The next circle out is where most of the people we comfortably call “friends” exist. These are people we know pretty well; meet and spend time with at some level of frequency, either in a group or a twosome; share some experiences, thoughts and feelings; and generally feel pretty comfortable being around. They are not “everyday” parts of your life, but still quite regular.

The number of people on this circle depends really on the person at the center. For a very sociable person, there would be more than for someone who is more of an introvert. I suppose for me this circle averages around five or six people. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a bit less.

Outward from this circle is a third circle composed of people who are more than acquaintances, but not really friends in a true sense. Work colleagues and other semiregular associates usually exist here. You have some influence on each other’s lives, usually in some specific way, but it pretty much ends there.

For me, this is a large circle composed of students, teachers and others whom I have gotten to know, but don’t really interact with beyond the circumstances of our knowing each other.

People who are just acquaintances could make up yet a fourth circle before you get to the open space where all the other people in the world exist, the space filled with the faceless strangers who move all around us. It seems to me that there is a difference between acquaintances and the people who occupy that third circle. But I am sure that some people could see acquaintances as belonging to the third circle, while others might relegate acquaintances to the open space of strangers.

Moving Between Circles

And the circles are not static, they are dynamic. A person might move from one circle to another, either closer or more distant, depending on how things change between the two of you. Sometimes you might spend a little more time with a person from that second circle, and he or she moves to the inner circle. Or a person might move back because one of you moved or just stopped spending as much time together.

Anyway… that’s a capsule of one theory of friendship. There are others. And there are myriad other questions about friendship like, “What qualities make a friend?” “How long does it take before a person can be called a real friend?” or “How can two people (of opposite genders) comfortably make the leap from friendship to a full-blown relationship… or is it even possible?”

Probably it’s better not to think too much about the questions. Just enjoy having friends, and try to be the best friend to them that you can be.

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It's Getting Better (all the time)

OK… so my last post, Living in a Cage, was a little on the negative side. But that’s how I was feeling last week.

It’s a new week, and I’ve chosen to come back to the light.

I’ve documented on this blog my struggles with my weight and the pain in my back and hips. The weight has been a growing (pun intended) problem of poor choices, lack of discipline, living alone, sedentary work, Internet addiction and – to be honest – laziness. The back and hip pain, if not a direct result of the weight gain, have certainly been exacerbated by it.

Last year, I tried to summon up some discipline and put myself on a strict diet, which I wrote about in the post, Die-it! That lasted barely a month, and the failure just left me more embarrassed, defeated and believing that I couldn’t beat the problem.

In March of this year, I started going to a local gym. I started going with a friend on the idea that we would go together and encourage or push each other to do it a couple of times a week. I began with a flourish, but she quickly gave it up, and I got lax pretty quickly too. Another failure… more or less.

Finally – Success!

In May, however, I hit on something that has been a success and really helpful. I began going to a local clinic for spinal health. It’s called Espina. They offer medical consultation, physical therapy, massage and other techniques to help people with spine and joint problems. I go twice a week for physical therapy and massage, and next week I will add what they call “underwater traction” to the mix.

The results have been really quite good. It’s not apparent (yet) from my appearance or weight, but that’s a matter of finding that discipline to force myself into the kind of eating habits that – combined with the workouts – can melt off the kilos (or pounds). But the main things are that my back and hips are feeling better and that I feel stronger overall. The pain is not completely gone, but there is definite improvement!

The physical therapy is essentially a program of gym exercises with a trainer/therapist. My program focuses on muscles that support the back and hips. I do a lot of back work, both upper and lower, as well as a full regime of exercises for the hips, groin and legs. There is a bit of chest work thrown in as well.

I am working muscles I have almost never worked before. Interestingly, many of the exercises are things that we used to see girls do in my health-club weightlifting days, but “us guys” rarely did them. These are exercises for the inner and outer thighs, hips, butt and groin. And there is a big focus on abdominals. This is all stuff that I need.

Steadily, I’ve been getting stronger, even in my hamstrings, which were always a problem area for me. And I have begun to notice that, under the layer of “soft tissue” that I still carry, my arms and shoulders are getting harder – almost like the old days. That is a GREAT feeling!

My work schedule allows me to go only twice a week, but I’ve started doing the “warm-up” exercises at home every morning. I am trying to retrain myself to do this BEFORE I turn on the computer in the morning. I still have my gym membership, and I try to get there at least once a week to supplement the training at Espina. At the gym, I do some of the exercises from my physical therapy (or at least similar), but I also try to do more with my arms and chest.

And… I am cycling more!

But Still… the Hard Part

So, it’s getting better. The next step – and definitely the hardest – is to make the kind of real and lasting food-choice changes to supplement the physical stuff. This is incredibly difficult because I (my Self or my “soul mind”) am still locked in a battle with that “devil on my shoulder” (the “physical mind”) as I wrote about in the post, The Soul, the Mind and the Heart. This is absolutely the hardest part.

This is the part where a partner can really be helpful: someone who cares about you and can encourage and even push you, but out of love. It seems to me that when you have someone close who is “in your corner,” who you know wants the best for you, and who you CHOOSE to be responsible to, you have a powerful force for change.

You want to please that person, to make her (or him) proud of you, and you want it for the right reasons. If the relationship is right, you appreciate the other person’s concern and effort to help you, and through your own love, you want it to not be in vain. You want that partnership to really mean something.

Making a public declaration of “dieting” as I did last year is a loser; it has no real power. It’s too easy to listen to the physical mind saying, “Who cares what other people think?” And so you slide back into the bad habits. But when it’s someone you care about and who cares about you, when it’s personal and private, you don’t want to mess up. And best of all, you have someone to help you defeat that stupid, grinning devil on your shoulder.

Finding a Way

That all sounds nice and great. And I’m sure it would be. But my reality is that I am on my own in this. My message to myself has to be that if other people can do it without help, then I can too. I have made some changes, and I am seeing some real results. Now it’s time to build on those results and take the next step.

It’s the hardest thing, to be sure. But since this is a beautiful, sunny day, and I am writing this post in one sitting shortly after my Espina workout – and as I am choosing to be fully positive today – I believe that I can and will get on the right side of this thing.

Maybe I will still find some help along the way, but whether I do or not, ultimately it is up to me. And this is really how it is for all of us.

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Living in a Cage

For the past five or so days, I’ve been unusually cranky and irritable. Maybe it’s the heat, or maybe it’s just that I’ve not been sleeping well and have been really tired. Maybe it’s the frustration of not being able to get essential things done without help, or maybe it’s not having any hot water at home for 12 weeks (and counting). Maybe it’s stress: work stress, physical stress or stress of some other sort.

I spent a lot of time yesterday thinking about this. It was Saturday, and I was physically and mentally exhausted, so I never left my apartment. Mostly, I slept – something I clearly needed. But I also tried to do some writing, and I did a lot of thinking.

The Realization

Repeatedly while I was trying to think, I found my contemplation interrupted by a variety of distractions. Someone’s stupid yappy dog was “yapping” outside (as they often do), and shortly after that, a car alarm went off (as they often do). Then there was the sound of voices outside my window: people sitting, talking and laughing on the bench outside the entrance to my building. At least they weren’t drunk – that would come later.

A number of times, the metallic door at the building entrance was slammed shut, and there was the sound of footsteps up and down the staircase. And of course there was the ever-present sound of cars on the main street: the simple whoosh of cars going by, honking horns, loud and irregular engines, and the unmistakable screech of bad brakes on marshrutkas (buses).

These are the sounds of life in a city, the sounds you have to expect with people all around you. And that is the problem, or at least part of the problem: I was not made to live in a city.

I got to thinking about a post I wrote almost exactly a year ago entitled, Just a Fond Memory, in which I compared my Kharkiv environment to the life I used to have in the Colorado mountains. Reading the post, I realized what has been eating me; it’s something I’ve realized before: living in Kharkiv sometimes makes me feel like I’m stuck in a cage… or a prison.

I’ve always been a pretty adaptable person. This is why living in a different culture is not really much of a problem for me. Whether in Japan, Peru or Ukraine, my fascination with the differences in culture and people, and recognition that we have more in common than not, has always more than compensated for any cultural discomfort.

So it’s not about living in a foreign country. For me, that’s a piece of cake. But living continuously – with no break – in a foreign environment… that’s the problem.

A Country Boy Out of His Element

For me, a city is a foreign environment. If I was stuck in Chicago, Boston, Paris or any other big, noisy city, I know I would feel pretty much the same. It’s only slightly worse here in Kharkiv, which is probably a little more intrusive on a person’s peace than most North American or Western European cities (though, I’m sure, far less than places in many other parts of the world). I'm sure I would completely lose it if I had to live in some pit of swarming humanity like New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City or anyplace in China or India.

I’m a country boy. I’ve loved the natural peace and quiet of the Colorado mountains and forests since I first met them. And I’ve found similar comfort in wild, natural places like the coast and forests of Maine, the Monterey Peninsula and the hills of Arroyo Seca, the Peruvian Andes, and any number of secluded forests, shorelines, plains and pastures I’ve discovered in my travels.

My soul craves the peace and quiet of the natural world, especially a mountain forest of pines and aspens. There is an energy in it that recharges me, lifts my spirit, and renews my sense of purpose. It helps me maintain some sense of equilibrium and not lose my sanity in a hectic, overpopulated and often insane world.

I need it!

But in Kharkiv, I don’t get it – not ever. The city parks are always crowded with people who never seem to pay attention to where they are going. And what passes for “nature parks” in Kharkiv are also too crowded or trashed to feel like you are in a truly natural environment. 

I occasionally go bicycling in what’s called the “forest park” near my home, and it’s impossible to really feel like you have “gotten away from it all” when you see bottles on the ground, pass by so many other people and often still hear the sounds of cars from nearby roads.

There may be some forests and other natural places outside of the city, but I haven’t seen them. Having no personal transportation, it’s nearly impossible. Four or five years ago, I went on an excursion to a place outside of the city that was sort of a botanic garden, but there were a lot of other people there too. It just wasn’t the same.

The Transportation Quandry

I guess the culprit is lack of personal transportation. I don’t have a car and don’t drive here. I am limited to the places I can go on foot, on bike or by bus, subway or taxi. And that is a huge limitation! My world here consists of the same streets, the same stores and cafes, the same offices, the same places, the same sights and sounds – day after day. The overall square area of my regular travels is relatively small, but it wouldn’t matter much if I expanded to other parts of the city – it’s all about the same.

In the U.S., no matter where I lived, I could just jump into my truck and head off to the mountains or the shore. When I lived in the Denver metro area, I did that regularly. I went camping in the mountains often from spring to autumn. And when I lived in Massachusetts for a couple of years, I did the same: up to Maine or out on Cape Cod. It was important to put the crowds, traffic and noise behind me and spend at least a few days with nature.

That kind of escape was like a release valve to vent off the stress of work and everyday life. It was essential. When I moved to the mountains, it was even better because I spent most of my time in nature, only venturing into the city frenzy to work, shop and a few other things.

To be honest, during that time, the scale sometimes tipped a bit out of balance toward being a bit too alone, and I have written about the problems of living alone in the post, Living Alone. But overall it was far better than feeling constantly surrounded by madness.

I haven’t been out of my Kharkiv cage since I returned from 10 days in Switzerland in early May. It’s not as much of an issue in winter, but in good weather, the need to get away becomes like an irresistible pull on the soul, like gravity, a bird’s urge to migrate, or the need to breathe. The longer I feel cooped up here, the worse it gets.

This year, I thought I might have some opportunities to get away, but it hasn’t happened, and it’s apparent now that it’s not going to. I am going to have to just find a way to deal with it for another month until I leave Ukraine for a periodic visit to… Colorado.

Relief is Coming

If I can survive the next four weeks, I’ll jet off to the USSA, where I’ll have an opportunity to really get away from it all in the Colorado mountains. To make it even better, we’re going to have a family getaway to Steamboat Springs, a beautiful resort town in the rugged mountains of north-central Colorado.

I’ll be out of my cage and free to roam the mountains, as a mountain lion spirit should. That will be a sorely needed salve for what has been ailing me, and I plan to take full advantage of it. Hopefully it will be enough to carry me through the fall and winter back in the confines of Kharkiv.

But after that, I think something will have to change. Either I’ll have to find a way to be more mobile and independent in Kharkiv, or else I’ll have to make a move. I know that I won’t be able to stand another summer in a cage.

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When Falling in Love Was Easy

Maybe it’s just me.  But I doubt it.

Nothing seems easier or feels more wonderful than falling in love when you are young. Those are magic years, from the mid-teens to the mid-20s when hormones are raging, the feelings are new and exciting, and you haven’t yet had your heart torn out, stomped on, burned to a crisp, and then tossed into a dirty dumpster – at least not more than once.

During that time, there are no fears, no worries, and everything is about wonderful feelings and endless possibilities. We are blissfully naive and without a cynical bone in our bodies, and it feels great.

We can trust without reservation. And even if that trust is broken and the object of our affection leaves, we still have the capacity to cue up some more absolute trust for the next person. Sure, we remember the hurt, but the nature of our minds and bodies in those years is such that we can pretty easily put it aside for the next warm smile, fetching body or enthralling words.

Love is the Drug

The sex in those years is mind-blowing, and that has a lot to do with why we can just keep charging forward. Common descriptions like fireworks, explosions or “out of this world” simply do not do justice to the way we can completely lose ourselves in the fullness of the physical and emotional gratification we get. And, like a drug, we can’t get enough, and almost nothing can stop us.

But it’s not just the sex (for most people). It’s also about the pure feeling of connection with that other person and the anticipation of a beautiful future together. It’s the mind picture of building something important, something lasting, even though at that age we still have a hard time really focusing on the next day, let alone the rest of our lives. But the strong emotions (and that unabated trust) give us a sublime sense of security that in this person we have someone who will stand by us forever.

For some, there might be a little worry about rejection that can make them hesitant to “make a move,” but for most of us in those years that fear doesn’t factor into our thinking… or perhaps I should say, our actions (we don’t think much in those years). If we meet some rejection, we can more easily shrug it off. At that age, the sea truly is filled with beautiful, wondrous fish. If one doesn’t take your bait, you don’t have to wait long for an even better one to come along.

Yes, falling in love at that age is mostly carefree and easy. But then, it seems, something happens. We start to develop something awful: fear.

Things Start to Change

As we move through our later 20s, into our 30s, and progress toward our middle years, the brightness of the fire begins to fade. It doesn’t go out altogether, of course, and the changes happen later for some than for others… but it happens. And that brightness starts to be replaced, to one extent or another, by a cold, dark cloak of fear.

The hormones don’t rush at hyper-speed quite like they did before. And in many ways, that’s a good thing. But without that hormone blitzkrieg to ward off the bad stuff and keep us coming back for more, our realization of the fact that bad stuff exists begins to take root and gives us pause to think a bit more before we jump.

After a few more disappointments or all-out massacres of the heart, our ability to trust so easily diminishes and cynicism becomes more prevalent. We go from “anything is possible,” in the positive sense, to “anything is possible,” in the sense of what other people are capable of doing to us.

The Lucky Ones

Now, for many people this doesn’t really matter. They found their “right ones” during those “wonder years,” married, started families, and for the rest of their lives they are no longer concerned with dating, new relationships and all that stuff. That is, they’re not supposed to be concerned with it.

And I suppose that’s how nature intends for it to work. During the feverish years, we fearlessly tread the tumultuous waters of dating life until we couple up with someone. Then we turn our attention to working, building families, raising children, buying homes and going on vacations. The hormones and naiveté of the first stage are intended to help us find mates, and then it’s all supposed to calm down so that we stop that crazy searching and experiencing, and do the rest of the life stuff with a partner.

For the Rest – Too Many Questions

But it doesn’t work out this way for everyone. In fact, given divorce rates and such, it seems that a majority of people go through the shock of seeing their idyllic “together forever” lives shattered. Then they find themselves “out there” again in the dating scene (and possibly again, and again). So there they are, trying to navigate the dating and relationship rapids once again, but now their boats are overladen with the baggage they’ve accumulated, and it becomes much harder to steer the right course toward paradise.

What was so easy and straightforward – even instinctual – in those early days is thrown into a confusing jumble, fraught with the doubt and fear that have taken over their hearts. They start to face questions they never considered in the carefree early years:

• “Is she really interested or just being nice?”
• “Does he really like me or just looking for sex?”
• “Why did she say that?”
• “Why hasn’t he called?”
• “What if I move too fast? Will she think I just want sex?”
• “What if I don’t move fast enough? Will she think I’m not interested?”
• “Why hasn’t he made any moves yet? He hasn’t even tried to hold my hand!”
• “Why did she move away when I got close? I thought she was into me?”
• “He seems so nice, but they always seem nice at first; will he become a jerk later?”
• “I’m divorced – they will think I am “damaged goods!”
• “I’ve never been married – they will think I’m a loser!”
• “What if he is actually married?”
• “OMG… I think she might be married!”
• "What if he doesn't like the way I kiss?"
• “What if we aren’t compatible in bed?”
• “What if we’re compatible in bed but not much else?”
• “Maybe I’m too old.”
• “Maybe she (or he) is too old.”
• “I’ve been living alone for years; what if I can’t adapt to living with another person again?”
• “How can I find someone who will accept my kids?”
• “My looks have faded – how could anyone ever be really interested in me again?”
• “I have to work so much – how can I find time to start or build a relationship?”
• “All the good ones are already married or in relationships, and the ones who aren’t are losers – how can I ever find someone good?”
• “I’m not married or in a relationship – does this make ME one of the losers?”

Not everyone tortures themselves with so many questions, of course. Some people may find themselves asking only a few of these questions but not the others. Some people might still have supreme self-confidence – or been lucky enough to have not had their hearts torn out, stomped on, burned to a crisp, and then tossed into a dirty dumpster (at least not more than once) – and rarely entertain any such questions.

Maybe one of the biggest hurdles has to do with trust. Trust comes easily in those early years, but after enough violations, it becomes harder to put your trust in anyone. And after each successive time that you trust and lose, it is that much harder to trust the next person. He or she may be truly wonderful and have done nothing to cause you to be skeptical, but you start to think about how others seemed that way at first too. So you hold on to your trust like a dog guards a bone, waiting for some “sure sign” that it is safe to give it up.  

Like a mountain snowstorm, life can drop deeper and deeper layers of icy cold powder on you. But whether you bury yourself under all the doubt or just get lost in the whiteout from time to time, the point is that it is NEVER as easy later in life as it was in those magical early years.

But it’s Not the End

The fact that it is more difficult does not mean that it is impossible to find a wonderful person and build that “together (for the rest of) forever” life. It IS possible, and maybe even better. I think the fact that we get more self-protective after the hard knocks can be a good thing. If you can get past the fear, you can use it to make better decisions and find someone who will NOT add another notch on your failure stick… someone who will make all the previous heartache worth it.

It’s just that the process is a little harder, so maybe you have to do a little more. We tend to get into a protective comfort zone, and if you really want that relationship paradise, you have to have the courage and make the effort to step out of your comfort zone (but in a wiser way).

You have to take some chances and not be deterred if the other person’s fears result in an initial reaction that’s not what you had hoped for.  One of the biggest fears is to broach that question: “Are we just friends or is there something more at work here?” Often both people have the same silent question and let the fear of learning the answer keep them in the friends mode, even when perhaps they both would like to jump out of that mode.

The thing in this case is that you have to really KNOW what you want. Do you KNOW that you want to just keep this person as “just a friend”? Or do you KNOW that you like this person enough (in a “more than just friends" way) to at least try to make it more. If you don’t know for sure what you want, try to figure it out, because the other person might be thinking seriously about it and looking for a sign.

Communication is the key to everything. Our fears make us very unclear, and we send out mixed messages; we don’t intend to do this, be we do it anyway. This communication glitch is a big part of what makes it all so hard.

In the early years, we are usually much more clear with our verbal and physical messages: we quickly include the other person into virtually all aspects of our lives, we touch and kiss and move into sex quicker and without much hesitation, and we say “I love you” pretty easily, even though we don’t really understand the deeper meaning of the word and may be just reacting to the rush of emotions. But our intentions are usually pretty hard to misunderstand.

So it takes some extra effort to get past the worries and make it work. You have to know what you want, do your best to figure out if this person at least has the potential to be what you want, and then you have to have the courage to be clear about your feelings and desires, and not worry if the reaction isn’t what you hoped.

This doesn’t mean you have to proclaim your love before you even know if you like the same music styles or wallpaper designs. But it does mean that you should have the courage to be clear about whether you see this person as just a friend or possibly something more. And if it is your intention to try to build something more, make that clear. If you really only see the other person as a friend, even a very good friend, make that clear too.

Communicate! Don’t let the fear hold you back. Getting past the fear can be hard, but the results can be more than worth it.

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PS - If all else fails, get drunk together and see how quickly you can revert back to being fearless teenagers.

My Father

(This is a post I tried to write a year ago, but I never got it done. And even this year, I had hoped to post it before Fathers Day but missed the mark. It’s been a hard one to write, and I’ve changed it numerous times. But it will never be perfect, so I am finally just posting what I have.)

About a month ago they observed Fathers Day in the United States. It’s not as big a deal as Mothers Day (in May), and rightly so. But it still has significance, because fathers are important too. This day makes me think about a number of things: my own father and how I look back on him, my own performance as a father and how much I know I could have done better, friends and acquaintances who are fathers (good and otherwise), and my admiration and hope for the next generation of fathers in my family.

One thing that often gets me thinking about fathers is Facebook. Around Fathers Day, birthdays and anniversaries, my cousins back in the U.S. routinely post photos and memorials to their fathers, and I have always admired the adoration they have for their departed dads. (Technically, one of them is not my cousin, but a cousin to my cousins. But his dad was my godfather, our families were close, and I always thought of his dad as an uncle and him as a cousin.)

I share their feelings about their dads because they were men who I really looked up to as well. One of them had been my father’s close friend in their early years and, for that reason, became my godfather; his younger brother ended up marrying my mother’s baby sister, so he became my uncle. 

But sadly, I don’t feel similarly moved to remember my own father the way that my cousins are inspired to honor their dads.  I don’t have that same kind of adoration for the man. I feel bad about this because if he were alive and knew, he would be terribly hurt. And I would not want that.

Many Good Points

My father was not a bad man – far from it.  And in his way, he was a good father.  He worked hard to provide for his family, and he never failed. We didn’t want for anything important. We always had a safe, comfortable home, decent clothes, food on the table, etc. My sister and I didn’t have as much as some kids, but we had more than many others. We were comfortably in the middle class, and he was the reason why.

And my father was not a drinker or carouser. He would have a few beers occasionally in the summer, but that was about it. I don’t remember ever seeing him drunk or even close to it. He was steady and reliable. And he was mostly a selfless man who did without a lot of “toys” he might have liked to have had so that he could give his family what they needed.

He was generous to his children, perhaps to a fault. He always was ready and willing to help us financially when we hit tough times. When we needed him, he was always there.

Something Was Missing

I respect and admire all of those things about him. So why do I not feel so moved to memorialize him as my cousins feel about their dads?

I guess it’s because, despite all these good qualities, there was something missing.  My father was a closed-up soul and not someone who could offer deep thoughts and perspectives on life. His advice was limited to practical matters: how to work a table saw, how to wire a trailer, how to properly use a variety of tools, how to change a tire, spark plugs or the car’s oil.

Those were good things for a boy to learn from his father, to be sure.  But I needed more. I needed someone who could talk about life with me, who could give me advice about dealing with all kinds of people – especially women – someone with an inquisitive mind who could talk about science or music or art. 

I needed someone who could enthrall me with stories and help my imagination to soar, someone whose wisdom would form the bedrock for my own spiritual and intellectual growth. And I needed someone who could teach me how to hit a baseball, throw a good spiral, deke out a goalie, or win a fight when there was no other way. 

But that was not my father. I had to learn all those things on my own.

An Odd Egg

He was not a stupid man by any means, and I think he could have been much more than he was. But he was very limited in his outlook, and perhaps most of all in his self-confidence. It seems to me that he was a man who was never comfortable in his own skin. He covered it with a façade, a false bravado, but, deep down, I don’t think he ever really liked himself very much.

My father could swear up a storm when he was angry. One of my most enduring memories is of the occasional days when he would be running late for work, hurrying to get cleaned up and on his way, and yelling curse words at the highest decibel level possible. His swearing never included the F-word or anything like that; it was limited (there’s that word again) to a short rotation of several religion-related terms (taking the Lord’s name in vain, as it were) together with the phrase “son of a bitch.”  Those were mornings when I just wanted to hide under my bed covers until he was out the door.

My father's sense of fashion was like him: black and white. He always went to work in a white shirt with a narrow black tie, black pants and black engineer's boots. His idea of casual wear was a drab green or gray shirt with his black pants and black engineer boots – always the engineer's boots. In summer, he even wore his engineer's boots with swim trunks (not in the water, of course). I recall when my mother tried to get him to put some color into his wardrobe and wear more up-to-date ties. I thought it was going to kill him. 

He pretended to be an authoritarian, not only with my sister and me, but also with our cousins when they were in the care of my parents. It was something he could get away with when dealing with children who were not wise enough yet to question his orders. Looking back, I suspect he had a harder time doing that with adults, like on his job… but I really don’t know that side of his life at all.

And that segues into another issue: I knew almost nothing about his job, what he did there, or what it was like. I knew that he was a supervisor and then a middle manager at an electronics manufacturing firm – a branch of the Texas Instruments company. But that was all. I never saw where he worked, met only a few of his coworkers over all those years, and had no idea what his work life was like. He never talked about it; when he came home, he left the job behind.

My father was not an unkind man. As I mentioned earlier, he could be quite generous, especially with his family. But he was mostly aloof and insular. The only “stories” he told were of his army days in Panama, but I suspect that not all of these stories were real. He often mentioned about how he had his own Harley-Davidson motorcycle there and rode with some friends. That he rode a motorcycle, at least, there is proof in photographs. The rest of it… I don’t know. 

He had a scar on his shoulder that he said came from the .50-caliber gun of a fighter plane he was servicing. But a .50-caliber is a large and powerful gun, and its bullets are designed to destroy airplanes and other machines. It seems to me that such a slug would have damaged his shoulder more than was apparent. But I am not an expert, so perhaps it was true.

Most of all, my father was not an openly loving person.  Through all of my years growing up in that house, I never – not once – saw a display of affection between my parents. I never saw a warm embrace, never a kiss. My father simply found it difficult to make such displays; he was enormously reserved when it came to physical touch. I wrote once in an ironically humorous family history that, as they had two children, I was reasonably certain my parents had had sex at least twice.

I suspect that this kind of reserved nature and embargo on outward displays of affection ran contrary to my mother’s way, and she simply changed over time and adapted to the reality of her life. She was better at showing affection to her children, but even she became more reserved as we grew older.

What Shaped Him

I have often wondered why he was the way he was. What forces shaped and molded him? What made him so insular, so incapable of letting his feelings out?  I think it was because of his own father. I never knew my grandfather; he died shortly after I was born. His wife, my paternal grandmother, passed away before I was born, and there seemed to have been some bad feelings and controversy surrounding their relationship and her death. But my father rarely spoke about his parents, and he had no brothers or sisters, so it was all pretty much a mystery.

What little I learned about my father’s growing up and his relationship with his own parents came mostly from one of my aunts (my mother’s older sister).  My grandfather was a tough – and apparently mean – Irish cop in the small Massachusetts city where I was born. He had a fractured relationship with his own family, told a Catholic priest to “go to hell” and left the church, and made life difficult for both his wife and son. My impression is that my father grew up without having real relationships with grandparents, uncles, cousins, etc.

My father, it seems, wanted to please his demanding father, as any son would, but he couldn’t seem to measure up. So I guess he grew up feeling like something of a disappointment to his father. And it seems that it was from his own father that he acquired his emotional aloofness.

In a rare moment of openness, my father once told me that he was very proud of me, of my accomplishments and the man that I had become. I appreciated that, of course, and it meant a lot. Looking back, I suspect that it was something he wanted badly to hear from his own father but perhaps never did.

But all of this is mostly conjecture based on just a few facts. I could be way off base, but I don’t think so. His life growing up in that family seems to have been filled with a lot of hard feelings. My father was prepared to be the hardworking breadwinner for a family, but not to be a source of inspiration.

Not a Condemnation

After writing only a few positive paragraphs and so many that seem negative, it can certainly appear that this post is a condemnation of my father. But that’s not the case. I am simply trying to call it as I see it, and I’ve analyzed him a lot to try and understand where I picked up some of my own, similar tendencies, as well as to put into context how different from him I am.  I could have done much, much worse for a father. He was a good man.

It’s just a simple fact that I needed more. The person I am – the child I was and the adult I became – is very different from my father. I have some definite physical similarities to my father, in appearance and some facets of speech, but I think there is a lot more of my mother in me, in my nature, in who I really am on the inside.

But boys learn how to be men from their fathers. They adopt most of their fathers’ behaviors and ways of dealing with the world. When these behaviors and tendencies don’t work for them, they are left confused and wondering why.

Looking back on my life, I can see that in my early adult years, I carried a lot of my father’s tendencies with me. Most of them ran counter to who I really am, and it was a mystery to me why these ways of reacting to the world caused more difficulties than they solved. It took me a long time to figure it out.

Me as a Father

One result of all that confusion, I think, is that I wound up not being the kind of father to my own daughters that I wish I had been. I was not a complete failure, of course, just as my own father was far from being a failure. My daughters have both grown to be enormously intelligent, talented, kind and considerate young women, and my relationships with each of them is positive, open and with a lot of love.

But it seems to me that their achievements are more despite my influence than because of it. I know that for most of their growth years, I was not “there for them” nearly as much as I should have been. Divorce can make that happen.

Where my father was steady and content to work for years at a routine job and a routine life, I was not. Where he was willing to, as he put it, “be miserable in life and his marriage” for the sake of “responsibility,” I was not. Where my father was a stranger to any form of spirituality (and even seemed to fear it), I am not.

I don’t assert that this makes me better… not at all. Just different. My path in life has been far different than his: more spiritual, more inquisitive, more questioning, more open, more social, more emotional, more sexual. I am glad to be who I am. I could never have lived his life, and I’m quite sure he would not have been able to live mine.

But I do wish that living my life could have included being a better father in some of the ways that he was. That would have been nice. But it’s not how this life unfolded for me. Just as his life happened the way it needed to for him, so mine has followed the path that I need for the lessons I need to take from this earthly trip.