guidance

Seeking examples

examples
Thumbnail: _New-York-grass.jpeg
Thumbnail caption: Playing on grass with New York behind

My cousin and I sit at an outdoor bar off of a highway in south Jersey. It’s a decent spot for a July evening. The humidity is much lower than earlier in the week, or than New York last week. The two of us having an hour or two together like this, as adults, is rare, the last time five years or more ago. We’ve covered the general updates on life, kids, and activities earlier in the week, in settings with the rest of the family. This hour is for other topics, for things we like, things we think about when we at last have time to think.

“It’s about examples,” he says, “of picking what to do or not do from all the examples we have. I see my folks, my friends, and just try and say ‘yes this’ and ‘no not that’.”

We are talking about working less, about feeling better. I know what he means, of looking for people to model, or at least bits of people to model. It’s one of my favorite talking points: needing examples more than opportunities, and how bad humans are at coming up with ideas independently.

We talk about people that have shaped us, of families that inspire us, and discuss strategies for keeping our kids grounded while giving them experiences so far outside of our own upbringing. It’s wonderful, the kind of unexpected conversation that makes our swings through the US both rewarding and overwhelming.

“They’re living my dream, at least for a while,” he says of his kids. “Eventually they’ll go live their own.”

Eight months prior I walked around Austin Community College’s campus in a light rain and thought about examples much the same. We were again bouncing around the US, from a wedding to family to friends. As I wrote a while back, we spend our time in the US with people now, ever more focused on each conversation. We have no time to spare on these trips, brief attempts to capture so much of our prior lives. We take fewer photos, respond to fewer emails, read less, watch nothing. Our decisions, our attempts to be present, are built on our appreciation for the people we see. It’s an appreciation made sharper by distance.

In Austin I was filled with the echoes of the day before’s conversations, of all of the moments since flying in from Hong Kong the weekend prior. These moments, with time, have distilled into memories, into parts of the people we love. On that walk though they were simply a mishmash of things I’d heard, things I’d said, people I’d met or re-met.

So many of them were examples, or reminders of such. And so I was thinking about the parts of people that shape us, where we find them, and whether we are paying enough attention in the moment to recognize them when we do.

For us lucky few born without risk of starvation, with the opportunity to both study for and finance an education, and the freedom to select our own path, our need is for examples. For ideas on what to do with this life, what to do with our opportunities.

So often I hear of children following in their parents footsteps, in their hometown industries, in their family businesses. I hear these stories not because of the company I keep but because it is the world. A study, some years ago, said that the average American lives 17 miles from their mother. Distance, clearly, does correspond to life choices, or to a career. It does serve as a proxy for the variety of examples. Growing up in a small town on the east coast I didn’t meet anyone from Seattle until college, let alone from China, from Florida, or from Texas. These places were not inaccessible to me, I had family in California and college educated parents. Nor were distant places utterly unknown: we hosted exchange students and made friends with visitors from other countries. Yet much of the world remained foreign because of my personal sphere of activity. My view of what was possible was limited to my immediate examples, my peers: people who’d left home to be an electrician, who’d lived in Massachusetts and worked at theater festivals. Of those who had gone to college, moved to New York, and studied art. Of those who’d gone to college in my home town, or spent summers at home, and were still seeking other options.

In my teens my examples constrained what I thought possible. Going to college changed me. And yet, in my twenties, I struggled to come up with careers that would occupy me, that would take advantage of my abilities. I still had poor examples, even after two years in Tokyo. Even after the first two in Shanghai I still knew but a few people living the kind of life I thought by then might be possible.

I met them, eventually, in Shanghai and all over. Or I realized the parts of people I was already relying on. In some ways this is how I learned to talk to everyone, every where we go. Not because they might become good friends, which puts a pressure of expectations on the conversations, but because they might have new stories. Each new face might provide mental fodder for my internal option list. All new people have almost certainly done something I’ve never considered.

Driving to the airport at the end of our July hustle across the US, I think of my cousin, and how lucky that evening was. I think of all the people we know in the US now, the people we see on these hectic swings. They are all good examples. I wonder if that defines our friendships now, in some way. The people we spend hours traveling to see, the people who host us on short notice, who pick us up at airports, all are examples in some way. They have spent years traveling, or lived abroad. They have children and high pressure jobs, or complicated responsibilities. They make art, or music, or food, or hardware, or play competitive sports. They are our families, our high school friends, college friends, or ultimate friends. They are past colleagues, Houston friends, San Francisco friends, Shanghai friends, Tokyo friends, or Hong Kong friends. They are our people, scattered across the globe and seen but briefly, if at all, each year.

It’s wonderful, now, in my forties, to realize how many examples we have. It’s wonderful to hear that my friends are likewise seeking them, and hopefully to be an example as well, in odd ways.

Be not lost

In June friends arrive in San Francisco. By car, from Colorado via New Orleans, via California, via Houston. Late in the evening we joke that we are growing older in years and traveling in circles. Like everyone.

Many things have changed since our last cohabitation. We live in San Francisco, for one. We have jobs, cars, and a kitten. The later of which rampages around the living room, doing small flips. Our guest is thankfully without allergies and with patience, for Mr. Squish uses small paws to the face to test new accomplices. She passes his four am challenges and we spend days wandering, exploring this city again. San Francisco is gracious. May’s gorgeous weather lingers into June. The week is seventy degrees and filled with sunshine. Eighty. Eighty five. We bask, we dance, and we celebrate the company of those without schedules. We cook and discuss fish. It is a marvelous week of knowing a place well enough to be a guide and yet not well enough to be bored doing so. I wonder if this summer will be the peak of this city. Is.

And we amble home through the park in the fog which finally, long past midnight, creeps in.

In June a friend asks for guidance on the trains of Japan. Our recent adventures allow the specifics to come easily to mind. Deeper, though, lies the layer of comfort that comes from living there. I wonder how to impart this specific kind of familiarity with locations, with lines and names. Born of taking the Saikyo line home every day for two years, of walking dozens of times between Shibuya and Harajuku, of bicycling to Omiya in the dark, it is difficult to explain. The trains in from Narita, the NEX or Keikyu, retain the memories of old journeys home, jet lagged upon return from America, from Italy. Without these they would be meaningless words leading to places unknown.

The details do fade. Without the recent trip I would have known few restaurants from a decade ago. Without our long evening walks in February from this new apartment I would not know so many restaurants in San Francisco, in the Richmond district. Yet I am not lost here in San Francisco. I was not lost in Tokyo this spring.

With this realization, and the challenge of helping friends discover places I have been, I remember my own goal from years and countries back: to keep moving until I am comfortable arriving anywhere.

To keep exploring until I am not lost.