SATURDAY, 6 MARCH 1999
What I mean by arriving in the metaphor of the road is that you emerge from the woods at some point. After weeks of walking in semi-darkness on endless paths and living on wild fruits and berries, you see the light one morning. Just before noon you reach the edge of the forest. You find yourself on a road that runs across rolling hills, along cool rivers, through green valleys …
You get tired of walking and walking and walking. You get tired of trying to find your way. Would this be why some people are happy with the idea of a suburban existence? Maybe they got tired of all the footpaths, of sleeping under trees, of running away from things that threatened them. Perhaps they had reached the end of the forest, and decided to settle down on a patch of open ground – in a place where they feel safe.
Now, I can criticise bourgeois culture as much as I want, but these people at least have a life! They don’t pretend their lives are massively exciting. They work year in and year out for the same company, or in similar situations. And even if they exchange one suburb for another, the same basic lifestyle is maintained. They’re not waiting anymore for their lives to start. They have come to a point where, if they had to stop and think about it they would say: “It’s not the life of a rock star, but it’s my life.” They also say: “I live, today. It may not be everything I dreamed of, but at least I live today. I’m not waiting for tomorrow in the hope that I’ll be leading a more glorious and exciting existence then.”
I, on the other hand, always dream of tomorrow. Tomorrow I will start living, and it’s going to be the way I wanted to live today, but it’s only going to be tomorrow. I find it highly problematic to say: “Well, this is it, this is home. I hope you’re comfortable, because you’re probably going to be here for a long time.” If I look back over the past few years, I’ve always shown this tendency to say: “If you don’t think it’s fantastic, don’t worry. This place is not really home. Tomorrow … or very soon I’m going to reach my real home. And it’ll be a great place …”
The question is not whether I want to settle down at some point; the question is for what I want to settle. I’m not an adventurer. I just don’t want to be stuck in a place where I don’t really want to be.
I believe as long as you have the energy and the will to work for something that you would like to settle for, you shouldn’t get comfortable with anything less. You’d probably always have to settle for less than your number one ideal life, but you can be realistic, and still end up in a good place.
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