I want to talk to you about The Big Life (or La Grande Vie, as I called it in my first work of French pseudo-fiction, which I may or may not share with you at a later date, if you promise not to judge me by my grammar).
The Big Life: what is it? What makes a life small, restricted, or ingrown, and what makes it expansive, possibility-ridden, unencumbered? Is it where you live? Is it the people with whom you surround yourself? Is it finances, or family, or a sense of independence?
I remember doing a family history project with a bunch of six-year-olds a few years ago for social studies. One of the things I asked the students to do was to talk to their parents about their origins. Paper after paper came back to me, saying, “I was born in Lindsay. My parents were born in Lindsay. My grandparents were born in Lindsay.”
Now, Lindsay is not Toronto, or Montreal, or New York, or Paris. Lindsay is a small, rural community in the middle of (pretty much) nowhere. It has its charms, to be sure, but there is nothing particularly distinguishing about it. Even Bobcaygeon, a small rural community even deeper in the middle of nowhere, has a massive shoe store to commend itself to the wider world. But Lindsay? It’s just a little Canadian town, surrounded by lakes, trees, and farmland.
“What small lives these people lead,” I thought to myself, as I imagined generation after generation living, marrying, and dying on one little speck of this great earth. “I don’t want a small life. I want The Big Life. I want to Go.”
Going is a form of enlargement, I’m sure of it. In the last three years, I’ve visited a dozen countries scattered across four continents. I’ve lost track of the cities and airports I’ve passed through, the mountains I’ve climbed, the seas I’ve sailed, the terrain I’ve trekked. And I live now in a foreign land that is about as far removed from little Lindsay, both geographically and culturally, as it could possibly be.
Is this The Big Life? It sure feels like it, when I’m scuba diving in the Mediterranean or camping out in the Sahara. One does not ride camels in Lindsay. One does not barter for one’s daily necessities. One does not wonder how to say “thank-you” in Polish or “please” in Hungarian. One certainly does not climb the Great Wall of China. These are Big Life things. They are things that cannot be done in any alternative form of “elsewhere.” They are unique, defining, unreplicable experiences. That’s what The Big Life is all about, right? It’s about Doing Big Things and posting them on Facebook for all the world to see. Look at me and my gigantic, interesting life!
The Great Wall of China
The Bavarian Alps
The Eiffel Tower
Surfing in Dar Bouazza
Tiananmen Square, under the watchful eye of Chairman Mao
The Greek Acropolis
Berber bridal wear
The Sahara Desert
Camel trekking
Venice, Italy
The Atlas Mountains
Nice, France
Scuba diving in Greece
Buying oranges at the medina
You should know, though, that taking selfies with Chairman Mao is not representative of the real, everyday, Standard-Sized Life that I live in Casablanca. If anything, my Moroccan life has been one of shrinkage and thinning (not in body-size, unfortunately, but that’s another story).
Let me tell you what I mean.
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She waved a cheery good-bye and floated away in her glass carriage, and I confess, I gulped a little. Me – find my way across the mountain and down to Lake Königssee, then catch the boat to Kessel, the bus to Berchtesgaden, and the train to Bad Reichenhall – without my GPS? Or Google maps? Without even my phone to look after me if I get lost? No cell service, no wi-fi, no homing pigeons… just me, a pamphlet, and a series of destinations? Me – the wanderer who can barely get from home to work and back again without an unintentional detour? Without a functioning phone? Not even one?
