Living Globally and Not Locally - Purposeful Detachment

Many would say I have no life, and in a local sense and where I live, they would be right. I have no life in Hamilton, or even in Canada. I don't know anyone that I actually see in real life, with the exception of my daughter. Any actual humans that I see are incidental. They are people who occupy a certain position in life, where I have to deal with them for one reason or another, but they aren't central to my existence on a personal level. One person could just as easily be replaced by another. For example, my landlord, banker, or the clerk at Wal-Mart. They're there to do a job, and I don't interact in any truly human ways.

It's been that way for me for some time now, despite the fact that I'm not a truly anti-social person. When I go out, I usually end up talking to people a bit, and if I've got one of my ferrets with me there's always going to be a bunch of conversations with random strangers. I can get my fill of in-person socialization for a few months, just with one trip on the bus to go to the vet.

What this all boils down to, though, is the fact that it wouldn't matter where I was. I'd still have my ferrets, I'd still be chatting aimlessly with strangers, and I still wouldn't have what anyone calls roots. There was a time when I did. I had friends I actually saw in real life. Hell, when I was a teenager I was always with friends. I was like that in my early twenties, too. I'm still friends with some of those people, but the face-to-face connection isn't as necessary as it used to be.

It some ways it's great to be unfettered and rootless. Freedom is a beautiful thing. However, I don't think it's necessarily a desire for freedom. I think it's probably more an indication of the fact that I simply haven't decided where I'm going just yet. I know I won't be putting down any permanent roots in Hamilton. I won't live permanently in any city, actually, and there just isn't enough open space around here to make it appealing to me to remain in the area.

I want roots. A piece of property, a home, that sort of thing. I don't necessarily wish to join the local community centre. That just isn't my style. What I do want is to leave something behind. Not just for my daughter, but for the world itself. I want to make a change for the better, and since all that can be done through the use of computers and the internet, where I actually stick my house doesn't have a whole hell of a lot to do with it.

My rootlessness has everything to do with how my personal life played out, of course. At one time I was married and planning to spend the rest of my life with someone. Okay, there were three times I was married and planning to spend the rest of my life with someone, but there's no need to get snarky about it. I either suck at the marriage deal, or I just picked the wrong people for me. At this point I'm a little shaky on which is which.

Now I've spent the last five years in this rootless state. At first it was strictly because I was depressed and miserable. The ending of a marriage will often do that to you. Okay, so I'm not divorced yet, so technically I'm still married, but we tend to think of that a little differently in Canada. Here we have something called legal separation. Once you're separated neither of you has access to anything the other person makes from that point forward. Legal separation has an impact on custody and such, as well, but that's not something I need to worry about these days. Another big difference in Canada is that you don't need permission from the other party to obtain a divorce. It's enough for one person to file. The other one can contest the terms, but they can't actually stop the divorce.

Americans, however, apparently call themselves married until the day the divorce is final, which seems freaky to me. I mean, once it's over for me the other party is an ex. Husband implies someone who has a say in my life. My ex would call me his wife and it would freak me right out. If I wanted to be called his wife, we'd have still been together. To avoid confusion, I suppose I should get on that whole divorce thing, though. He can't touch my money, and I can't touch his, but most people don't understand why we haven't made it final. In my case a lot of that has to do with being broke. I couldn't be bothered to spend the money when I needed it for other things. Now, of course, I haven't heard from him in a couple of months, which means I have to actually track him down in order to go ahead with it. I don't need his permission, but he does need to be served the papers if we aren't filing jointly.

Once I got over the emotional fall-out of separating (for those who are picky about terms), I suddenly had other issues looming over me. First it was my tailbone, and then it was my hip joints. I've managed to get the tailbone removed and can sit in a chair again, but the hip joints still need their surgery. Being stuck in limbo because of the situation meant I couldn't keep my business running, and my plans for buying property and building my house were put on hold. Maybe there was a reason for that. Maybe it wasn't the best time for me to launch that particular project. Just maybe there were some things I needed to know about myself and my life before I was ready to make that decision about where I wanted to be.

I do know that I've since come up with at least one new requirement for my property. I've realized that I want to be on water. It was only a couple of years ago that I figured that out when I found a property with a river running through it and realized how much that meant to me. I started to consider the possibility of lakefront or oceanfront property, and when I started doing some checking I realized how obtainable that dream really was. Because I don't need to be close to city centres, and can live where I like, I'm not forced to look at the waterfront properties near those big cities - the properties that cost a fortune. I can be in the areas less-traveled and less-desired by masses of the population. I don't even care how cold it gets. With radiant in-floor heating, run by solar power, heat is not going to be a problem.

A friend of mine has a funny attachment to Borneo, but (loincloths or no) I'm not sure I could handle the heat & humidity there. It's pretty temperate, but still on the high side. The high amounts of rainfall would be cool, though. I'd love that! I'd rather be in the cold than the heat, though. I have no intention of being anywhere that requires 45 SPF sunblock just to walk from my house to my garage, so Mexico is out.

Yes, I definitely intend to have a garage - with a few nice cars in it, I might add. I'd like an old Jaguar XJS convertible, with the purring 12-cylinder engine. Maybe a DeLorean, with or without the drugs. If I ever have lots of money to spend on a car, there will also be a 1963 'Vette with a split rear windshield. Then there will be my 1998 BWM 3-series for everyday use - I'm debating on the convertible for that one, so maybe I'll have both just for the hell of it. They're cheap enough.

So, one day there will be roots, whenever I can figure out where the hell they'll be shoved into the ground, but those roots will spread to the global community and not merely the local one. As I've gotten older I've started thinking more and more about what's best for the world, rather than what's best for my country. Things like outsourcing that aren't particularly great for Canada or the US, but have had an amazing impact on developing countries like India. Maybe we've suffered for the loss of jobs, but then our suffering is nothing compared to the suffering in India. The suffering of the women in India has been reduced because North American companies don't care if they're women and hire them anyway. A friend of mine in India works for one of these companies, and they pay equal pay to women. This is what it means to think globally, for the benefit of all human kind, rather than just the few in our corner of the world.

This is also how I think of my friendships. You can be face-to-face with people all you want, but if you're not open about yourself and your life the friendships are no more meaningful than anything you might experience online. I often find people open up far more online than they do in real life or even on the phone. You can learn about people all over the world - the struggles they face that you might otherwise never learn of, and the cultural differences that are fascinating if we can get past the prejudices.

I know there are differences between online conversations, and phone conversations, or even between phone conversations and face-to-face conversations. In some ways the differences can be even more important when talking to someone you don't know well. I mean, I've had some bizarre misunderstandings in the past couple of months because someone mistakenly believed I was serious about something, or vice versa. Being a Canadian I think almost everything is funny, but there are things I do take very seriously, so how is anyone to know the difference?

Vocal inflections are a cue, of course, but body language can make all the difference. That sudden silence on the other end of the phone could be anything from a portent of disaster to someone trying not to laugh their ass off at you. This, of course, is only important if the people you're talking to are people you actually care about. There are only a couple of people I talk to either every day, or almost every day. Actually, I think there's only one person I talk to every single day. With the others I occasionally miss a day, as I don't count the odd Facebook comment. Still, if I'm talking to someone that much, it's because they have meaning to me, and I care about them.

I'm not big on phone conversations, usually, and I can think of only one person I'd talk on the phone with every day if I could. With everyone else I'm content to leave it to the electronic conversations. Of course, that same person is someone I'd see in person, too, which is a whole other level of personal interaction. In most cases I don't consider it necessary to see people in physical reality. After all, if I can view a person online and see their expressions, what else do I need?

It's only when physical contact with someone becomes desired, that it's required to meet in person. No, I don't necessarily refer to sex, although, hey, we all have our 'druthers' and healthy appetites there. Sex is great, but some people also have a physical need to touch others. Even in romantic relationships where you are having sex on a regular basis, there are other forms of physical contact that become a part of the relationship.

Platonic relationships also seem to have physical requirements, although I'm personally not sure why. I'm not the touchy-feely type there. My daughter will get the occasional hug from me, and friends I haven't seen in a really long time that I consider to be family, but I do not sit cuddled up with female friends (or male ones for that matter, unless there's something else going on there). I have a wide territorial bubble, and it's usually only sexual partners that get to sit inside that bubble with me. Otherwise I just get weirded out.

Of course, I have no bubble-mate at the moment, so I'm floating around a bit these days. That's okay, though. One day I'll float where I need to be, landing on the grass where my feet will begin to sprout roots.