Upon returning to the United States, I am glad for my own sake to find that the challenge I sought when I chose to leave the country two years ago is right here waiting for me in the land where I grew up.
I was raised with plenty of privilege and opportunity: my mother made good money as an electrical engineer for AT&T, my father found a good position as a university professor. My U.S. family has never known the worry of how we would provide a comfortable life for ourselves. And like so many other young Americans, particularly of the upper middle class breed, I was assured and believed that I could become anything. College started and by the time it finished, life was joyful – my Ivy League education had been stimulating, my adopted New Yorker status was heavenly, and I had a decent hope of finding the kind of job in my beloved city that would both please society’s standards and fulfill my heart’s need to help other human beings.
Yet it had all started to feel saccharine, trivial, self-absorbed, irrelevant, inconsiderate. The delicious food I ate and beautiful spaces I loved were created and sustained by the wealth of the rich country I lived in and the even richer city I adored. The resources and economic relationships that supported both of these were undeniably tied up with the lives of people around the world, people who could potentially lead a life and live in a country that would more resemble mine if my own country were willing to pay more for our imports and their labor—at the expense, I assumed, of partly diminishing our own material richness. I could not ignore the privileged position I occupied on the more comfortable side of this mutually dependent economic relationship, and I did not enjoy the guilt I felt for being there. I wanted to live somewhere where I did not have to feel that the way I live my life is so unfair to others.
I have long been particularly interested in the affairs of the world beyond my country’s borders, and in my arrogance I grew increasingly frustrated with daily conversations that revolved around the newest luxury technologies, famous people’s lives, local organic food options, Internet trends, and the like. I yearned to immerse myself in debates and struggles that aimed at asking and solving the big problems, problems in which life and death were at stake and whose solutions could bring true changes to the lives of people who are nowhere near as wrapped in luxury and opportunity as the people within my bubble in America.
I had been taught that my entire life’s education and upbringing were woefully narrow-minded: that the perspectives, values, and assumptions with which I and everyone in my circle were imbued were the perspectives, values, and assumptions of only a very small sector of humanity. There are many definitions of a good life, I began to insist; there are many ways to be a good and moral person. But what are they? Which should I choose? I wanted to be the best person I could be, not only the most informed and educated and intellectual, but truly the best combination of values and behaviors found in many different societies. I needed to observe, learn, and, when appropriate, imitate.
So, in seeking the challenge of being outside my comfort zone, of participating in the “real” debates and struggles, of changing myself, I chose to leave America.
I left. I lived in the West Bank for two years. I found it very challenging to always be outside my comfort zone; I found I sought out the familiar to live in and do and people similar to me to surround myself with. Sometimes I fought these impulses; often I did not. Still, I learned: about myself and about a new country and society. I enjoyed having the potentially insightful perspective of an “insider,” of someone living in a country so often misunderstood and misreported on. After a while, it got too hard: too unfamiliar, too solitary; I could not figure out how to be as active and productive and engaged as I wanted to be in such a different setting from the one in which I was formed.
I chose to return to America. And here I have been, showing my love to family and friends whom I have dearly missed, but also discovering that I have not escaped the opportunity for a transformative challenge.
There is much that is familiar and easy about living in America. Much of life is comfortable, enjoyable, and stimulating. But I have realized something that I had ignored in my wanderlust two years ago: it can be just as challenging to live in your own country as to move somewhere foreign. It can be as if not more difficult to grapple with your own country’s debates and troubles as to live somewhere very different from what you know.
There are many unique and wonderful things about the United States. But there is much that infuriates, exasperates, and puzzles me, probably again spurred on by my own arrogance. Again and again, our nation’s representatives publicly insult and disrespect their own compatriots because the latter are adherents of the Islamic religion. Fear and hate is not reserved for American Muslims but also targets, at home, American homosexuals and, abroad, any country that refuses to meekly obey our government and that engages in the same aggressive posturing that our own leaders do.
My past frustrations remain. We spend our disposable wealth on adult toys rather than on the poor or disadvantaged within our own society. Obsessed with growing our economy, we find the notion of living without two cars and a fully applianced, gadgeted home to be an unbearable burden. I do not sufficiently understand economics to know exactly what our lifestyles need to be in order to fund dignified lives for every member of our society, and there are many things that I myself could still do to lead a more generous and unselfish life here in America. But what I do know is that it will be hard to deal with the fear, hate, and insistence on personal luxury that too often seems to characterize this country. It will be hard for me to understand, to sympathize, and, if I continue to find it necessary, to change these things. These are goals that from where I stand today feel just as insurmountable as “solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” There are no tanks on the roads, midnight kidnappings, or racist laws (mostly), so it can be easy to feel that with these goals there is less at stake. The question of “stake” is perhaps one I should focus less on. But, I see now: the challenge of living as a true and engaged citizen in this country with all its imperfections will be formidable. It will require an active heart, a firm moral sense, persistent humbleness, and more determination and skill than I have ever shown before.
