Nomadic

I was recently asked if I would consider myself a nomad.  I quickly and definitively answered “no.”  To me, a nomad is a person without a permanent home, who is out in the world wandering in search of their living.  I don’t consider myself a wanderer as it implies that I am moving because I do not know what it is exactly that I am seeking.  My decisions to move abroad, multiple times, have been made while I was firmly planted in what I consider my permanent home (DC-area).  And I made the decision to move abroad with what I consider full awareness of my choice and possible consequences. 

I have friends who I consider definite nomads for various reasons.  There are those who have been living an expat life for many years and that is their future – they arrive at one “post” with a definitive timeline (usually 2-4 years), and some time near the middle to end of that stay, they are beginning to plan and choose their next foreign post.  They may own a nice piece of property in the States or Western Europe that they consider their “investment” or “retirement” or “home leave” property; the place that they are working now to spend their permanent sometime-in-the-future life in.  Or, they see the property once every year or two on their home leave.  I grew up in the upstate New York house where my parents still live.  I own a house in the States, that I still have furniture in, that I rent out from time to time, but I am actively paying the mortgage on, and when I think about returning to the States, that is the house that I imagine going…now, or soon.

I also think of nomads as people who resist putting down roots wherever they stop temporarily.  I recently attended an “expat” party.  People were congratulating each other for making it 6 months through their 12 month stay.  A young guy was proudly saying that he would never choose Jerusalem as a place to live and began talking of his plans to move to Lebanon in August.  Of the nearly 100 hundred people at the party, I think I counted maybe 3 Palestinians.  Do these people not even put down enough roots to make friends with the people they are living with?  I can understand why keeping oneself surrounded by expats makes another expat feel comfortable – there is camaraderie in the rootless.  But when I think of nomads, I think of people like Gertrude Bell or T.E. Lawrence who a wandered, but always with a seemingly principled approach to their work and the people with whom they lived. 

Living abroad may make the ground beneath my feet feel unsteady at times.  And I try to approach all that I see and witness with what I consider an idyllic nomadic curiosity.  And I constantly feel the longing of missing the company of old and new friends.   Yet that is where any semblance of a nomadic lifestyle ends for me. Maybe one day I’ll go out into the world as an aim-less, goal-less wanderer, but I’ll save that for the time when I don’t own a retirement home.