People who go and people who stay

It’s moving season around here. Our days are numbered in the single digits, and we’re not the only ones leaving soon.  Had 3 going away parties for other friends this weekend, and a couple more are scheduled for next weekend. As sad as I am to leave, I know I would be woeful if we were staying and watching our friends move away.  Life is transitory, even if you don’t go anywhere.

And sometimes you think you are not going to go anywhere, but you do. We’ve made some friends here whose husband works for the IRS instead of the DOD or military, so they don’t have as much of a work support group, but because they are Mormon, they have a great church network. The dad is thinking of switching over to NCIS’s fraud department because he wants to move around the world. This was their first overseas tour, and they have loved it. He’s been offered a job; now they have to decide whether to accept it or not.  The wife is sort of dragging her feet because she had mentally prepared to head back to their home in the states after a year in Guam.  Meanwhile, her husband has wanderlust; he just returned from a trip to the Himilayas with their 15 year old son. She asked me what I would do: stay or go?

I'm the wrong person to ask. 

I think I’ve mentioned before that a lot of military people who come to Guam use it as a jumping off point to visit places like Japan, Australia, Indonesia, China, etc.  A lot of the talk lately in the neighborhood has been about summer vacations to places like Thailand and Bali.  Photos and recommendations are being shared on Facebook.

Obviously, since we are moving, our vacation is a road trip to see family. After our trip to Japan, we got cold feet about spending so much money on trips, although if we weren’t moving back this summer maybe we would’ve planned another vacation for this summer. Can we justify spending $8000 or so for our family to experience new cultures and widen their understanding of the world?

On the other hand, local people here don’t travel much. One lady I was talking to hasn’t been to the southern end of the island in years.  A civilian my husband works with hadn’t been in the ocean enough here to see a sea turtle until our recent snorkel trip. As much as there is some sort of attitude that travel makes you a better person, are these people any less understanding or compassionate because they haven’t left their neighborhood?

I used to think I am not a person who goes.  I don’t really have a bucket list of places that I really want to see before I die. There are places I’d like to see, but I don’t feel compelled to save up for retirement trips. My sister and I once had time, money, and consent from our husbands to take a trip somewhere, but we were so ambivalent about where to go, and I was too overwhelmed by preparing for the move to Guam, that we didn’t go anywhere.  I listen to people talk about their vacations and I look at their photos and think, I’d like to go there too, but I do nothing to make it happen.  I am definitely an armchair tourist.

But now, in our last weeks, I’m a little sorry we didn’t go someplace else. The Far East is so close here! Of course, by nature I am a regretter, so maybe it’s temperamental to wish I had done what I hadn’t or wish I hadn’t done what I had. Working on that flaw.  Living here has taught me to be more relaxed about the future. The lesson that “things will work out” has been drummed into my head for nigh on forty years now.  They do, they do, they do.

Where would I have gone? The Philippines, Palau, Vietnam, Thailand? Those were my top choices, but the other hurdle to getting on a plane is deciding where to go.  There are so many beautiful places. How to choose one? How to choose where to stay? To eat?  To visit? 

These questions make me think that I’d rather spend the time and energy needed to take a vacation to see family and friends, much like the locals do. But every time we do travel, I love it. I love stepping on the plane.  I love following maps, visiting museums, trying new foods. I'm even excited to ride the plane back to the states and drive cross country.  But perhaps part of the pleasure comes from having worked so hard to get there.

Although being a tourist is both exhilarating and exhausting, I am grateful to have lived “abroad.” Guam is complex: both American and not. The couple of years we’ve had here have reminded me how short life is and how big the world is. The time here has flown by, just as our understanding of the place is deepening. I’d say yes to overseas orders again, even though the possibility is slim at this point in my husband’s career. I don’t know what to advise my friend whose husband is thinking of switching employers in order to see more of the world. There is good in both going and staying. I’m still not convinced you have to go abroad to understand other cultures and be a compassionate person, especially when there are so many subcultures in our own communities, but our family has grown from the opportunity to see another speck of the world.