“You actually did it!”
A few people have said this (or something similar) to us since my wife Andrea and I officially began spreading the word we had relocated to Oaxaca, Mexico.
I take it as an enormous compliment. I like to think of us as people who follow through on the things we say we’re going to do, and that if people were to describe us one of the words they’d use would be “reliable.” But I also appreciate that, conceivably, the sentence “You actually did it!” might end with “…what on earth were you thinking?”
Oaxaca is, for us, something of a dream fulfilled. As I’ve told a great many people now, our decision to leave New York City wasn’t motivated by many of the things that typically lead to people to move elsewhere. And as a native New Yorker I feel no shame in fully acknowledging that New York isn’t just imperfect, it’s also fairly terrible in a number of important ways. Yes: it is shockingly, mystifyingly expensive. Yes: it stinks, both literally and figuratively. Yes: it’s impossibly loud, almost all the time, filled to the brim with frustrated people trying to eek out an existence against increasingly impossible odds.
I could keep going.
But we loved New York. We still love New York. It is a fascinating, maddening, stupendous, astounding place to live, and just thinking about it makes me sad all over again that we chose to leave. Sad that we left our friends, our family, our beloved (rented) apartment in a neighborhood we adored, our favorite restaurants, our favorite shops, and parks, and quirky corners of the city.
We left because we knew with increasing certainty that because of our age (we’ll each be 40 this coming year), because of our desire to start a family, because of where we are professionally, our lives were changing whether we wanted them to or not. Pretty soon we might not want to go to many of the (very loud, not very comfortable) restaurants we loved. We might not have time, or the desire, to go to a bar. Even if our love of New York never changed, our ability to take advantage of many of the things we love about the city would, very likely, appreciably lessen.
Being a psychologist by training, and a journalist and writer by experience and practice, has taught me that life changes whether you want it to or not. You can navigate those changes, try to influence them and mitigate them, but you cannot stop change itself from happening. And knowing our life was going to change in significant ways, whether we had a kid or not, we asked ourselves “what regrets will we have about how we have lived?”
We knew we’d regret not having lived in another country, and we knew we’d regret not learning to speak a new language. But more important than that, we knew we’d regret not having taken a chance.
Ah, we're the same age.
"“You actually did it!” I've found, is basically the reaction of 99.99% of Americans if you ever live anywhere outside of America. Outside of a very small and self-selective group of people, it continually astonishes me that no matter how well educated, aware, or how much they complain, etc. compared to any other population in the world that has the same wealth, Americans simply tend to not leave America, and find infinite excuses, reasons, or rationales not to. (And I say this as a current expat that has lived in several other countries). Viva Oaxaca! Mexico is troubled in many respects, but I find there is a great humanity an joy sorely missing in much of the developed world these days.
Never regret taking a chance! Well said, well said, Jacob!