Reconciling Dualities: Is It Possible to Be Stable and Free at the Same Time?

This one’s for you and me, living out our dreams
We’re all right where we should be
With my arms out wide I open my eyes
And now all I wanna see
Is a sky full of lighters
A sky full of lighters

-Lighters, Bad Meets Evil ft. Bruno Mars

I’ve come to a crossroads.

I’m a woman with wanderlust teetering on the age where society says I should become “stable.”

But what does it mean to be “stable”?

Does stability equal settling down, mortgages, and gatherings with the in-laws on statutory holidays?

Does freedom equal frequent out-of-town trips, financial independence, and a borderless career?

Is it possible to have both?

The easy solution to stability is to return “home” to Vancouver where I grew up. However, as my article about millennials leaving Vancouver due to the discrepancy between income levels and cost of living details, it’s not the most logical solution.

Therefore, I consider all other options and am faced with a daunting task. How does one choose a single place to call home amidst the boom of globalization? Is it sensible to build only a local career when businesses are becoming progressively more international?

We live in an increasingly borderless world, where global communication happens in an instant, more businesses are going international, and we ourselves can too at progressively faster rates (perhaps even by space rocket in the not-so-distant future).

However, these technological advancements create an interesting dichotomy with the biological and anthropological structures of procreation that have propagated the human race for a millennia.

This creates a dilemma that I, along with many other women living in the 21st-century first world face—balancing the pressures of building a great career with a heritage which suggests that a woman’s worth is in her physical desirability, the status of the man she marries, and the health of the children she bears.

So I stand at a crossroads.

Am I to look for a sensible place to settle and build the Canadian Dream, or should I continue to chase lights, music, and career opportunities to whatever distant horizons they may lead?

On Stability

I once said that I sometimes get jealous of the kind of people who live the idyllic life—the Canadian Dream. They meet their future spouses in high school, get married when the time is right, buy a house, grow roots into their hometown, have children, and laugh with their extended families during annual reunions.

Once, I too lived the Canadian Dream and couldn’t have been more thrilled about it.

However, on a rainy day one April, the person I had settled down with moved out, ending my venture into stability.

I replaced him with my career and left the continent.

Every year, I feel more pressure find a good husband, settle down (again), and build a stable life in one place because I’m just not that young anymore.

It’s hard to do this—to put down roots—when you live on a visa and are often out of the country on weekends.

“Women are depreciating assets,” an acquaintance once said. While I proceeded to cut said acquaintance out of my life, his words stuck with me.

Yes, feminism has made immense progress in equal rights for women. We are able to walk outside without a male family member, vote, hold full-time jobs, be the breadwinner for our families, and even lead companies and countries if we so choose.

Though conservative schools of thought continue trying to hinder our rights, the progressive among us, from individuals to nations, are fighting and winning the battle for gender equality.

That being said, the shelf-life of women as potential mates is still shorter than that of men. While men are still under immense pressure to be professionally successful, women are still under immense pressure to be youthful. The imbalance here is that we all have our entire lives to professionally successful but only a short window of time to be youthful.

As Paulina Porizkova says in her New York Times article America Made Me A Feminist:

“In America, important men [are] desirable. Important women [have] to be desirable.”

Another former acquaintance once argued that gender inequality is not as much of an issue in a global metropolitan city like London.

“Women here are financially independent” he said. “The gender pay gap is being seriously addressed. Women in London often don’t start thinking about settling down until they’re in their 30s.”

At the same time, he, a professionally successful man in his late-30s, prefers to date women in their 20s because, as he puts it, “women my age all have a plan to get married and have kids.”

On Freedom

My longtime friends know that I’ve always dreamed of getting out of Vancouver, and of something more than a house in the suburbs, 2.3 children, and a husband who supports the family.

In my senior year of high school, I wrote my SATs and prepared to move to California for my undergrad. Due to my financial situation and the price of American universities, I stayed in Canada. I then continued to stay because of a person for whom I’d commit to house in the suburbs and 2.3 children (but a dual income).

I was happy to strike a balance—seeing the world on Canada’s 10 government-mandated annual vacation days (15 for more senior roles) and 10 statutory holiday days—and living the Canadian Dream the rest of the time.

After all, I had already been a year-long trip to sate my youthfully reckless wanderlust. Out of university, I spent a year bouncing around Asia, working as an English teacher to fund the way.

That, I convinced myself, was enough.

When I returned Vancouver at age 22, I told myself it was time to build stable life in one place because I just wasn’t that young anymore.

It all went as it should—I met a boy, fell in love, moved in with him, and went on family vacations with the in-laws.

Sure, I continued to dream that I’d one day “get out of here” and “see the world,” but we agreed that when we were older and financially stable, we’d go see the world together.

The relationship disintegrated and I allowed my youthfully reckless wanderlust to return with a vengeance.

I left my job, went on a half-year sabbatical in Europe, and blew all of my downpayment savings.

That, I tried convinced myself, was enough.

It wasn’t.

When I returned Vancouver from my sabbatical, I realized that the city told stories where I was once a character but no longer. I couldn’t remember the part I played in my hometown anymore.

By then, I was old enough to know that reckless globetrotting is not a long-term solution for wanderlust. I still had the intense desire to be free, but knew I had to do it in a way that’s sustainable.

I seriously considered staying vs. leaving again and decided that the most logical choice was to go. I detailed how I came to the conclusion in my Vancity Buzz article.

I landed in London and have since been attempting to find a balance between stability and freedom.

While building the rest of my life in the UK is not particularly feasible, it’s exactly what I need right now.

It’s been great to live in a place where almost everyone is at least bilingual—where I can show up at work on a Friday with a suitcase, jet off for the weekend, and still make it back to the office on time on Monday. It’s been great to work in a place where the government-mandated annual leave is 20 days (25+ for more senior roles) plus 8 statutory (bank) holiday days. It’s been great to have been able to make more progress in my career in the 1.5 years I’ve been in London than I did in 5 in Vancouver.

So What Now?

I discussed the issue of stability vs. freedom with a friend from Vancouver who left town in 2012. She lived around Asia, spent a year on the east coast of Canada for her Masters, and set up a consulting firm in Singapore in 2017.

She said to me:

Age is a meaningless number. I think society places parameters on age, and conditions us to think about it in particular ways.

You know, my best girlfriend (who up and moved to New Zealand last year because she decided she needed a change) and I were having a chat in the Philippines, and I asked her if she ever thought about settling down and getting a steady job since we are getting close to 30.

She looked at me and smiled a bit, and said, “You know that’s not for us.”

I looked at her for a second, and even in that moment I knew it was true. We aren’t made to settle. We are made to wanderlust, grow, and change.

We’re pretty similar, all of us, in that sense—late 20s, smart, driven, world travelers, friends in every corner of the world, multilingual, adaptable, successful, chasing our happiness and forming our dreams as we go.

– Joddi Alden, MA

Dualities Reconciled

Despite constantly scanning the sky for cheap flights and new adventures, I’ve nevertheless built a relatively stable for myself.

Even though I’ve found myself in at least 10 different countries every year as of late, I’m always in the office ready to go first thing on Monday.

And even though I’ve spent over 1/3rd of my 20s living across Asia and Europe, I do not plan to be one of those people who wander the world their entire lives.

I’ve always wondered how, and if, it’s possible to build a sustainable life caught between these dichotomies. How can someone who craves both stability and freedom build a place to call “home”?

There have been times when I was in Vancouver and loved the city. I felt at home on 4th off Commercial in my little city flat that was decorated with yellow flowers. I felt at home lounging on Sunset Beach with friends that were like family, strolling around the Trout Lake Farmers Market on weekends, watching open air movies by Second Beach in the summer dusk, and cooking three-course dinners for guests.

There have been times when I was abroad and loved the adventure. I felt at home on a ferry on the Bosphorus Strait with the lights of Europe to the west and the lights of Asia to the east. I felt at home sitting on central European trains with no air conditioning in the high summer heat, wandering the streets of Bangkok alone in the middle of the night, and living in 200 square foot cabins aboard Royal Caribbean ships.

Finding Home

I’ve thought long and hard about how I could feel “at home” in so many varying situations, yet often nowhere at all. The conclusion is that in those moments, it was exactly where my heart was.

Whether my life at a given time is suitcases and cardboard boxes, or heavy furniture and furry pets, if my heart is there then it is Home.

To me, Home is not a fixed place. It is every airport, train station, and port I’ve passed through, every place where I’ve made memories, and with a few select individuals. Though I plan to buy property in the near(ish) future so I can finally take my belongings out of boxes (even if it’s my parents who will look over them), they can stay there for now.

I still don’t have a physical place to put down roots. I live on a visa. However, my career is going steady and I can travel when I want. This is the cumulation of years of personal hard work.

I am stable, I am free, and I am happy.

The pincushion this Needle Butt was looking for is not a physical place. It’s a state of mind.

As fluid as the reality is, I’ve found what Home means to me—even if it belongs to an ideal, a person, or the world entirely.

And there is nothing wrong with any of that.

As Joddi says, we chase our happiness and form our dreams as we go.

 

You and I know what it’s like to be kicked down
Forced to fight
But tonight, we’re alright
So hold up your lights
Let it shine