Ever read The Epic of Gilgamesh? It may be the oldest written poem. Young King Gilgamesh becomes best friends with Enkidu, a wild man who was raised by animals and then literally seduced into human civilization. When Enkidu dies at the hands of the gods for helping Gilgamesh kill a sacred monster or two, Gilgamesh sets off on a (yes, epic) journey to find the secret that will bring his friend back to life.
Meanwhile, I’m on a farm in Maryland, far from everyone I know except my wife and daughter. Granted, that’s a tremendous “except” — Gilgamesh is all alone. And the people here are kind and generous and marvelous company. Still, no one can substitute acquaintances for friends. Even new friends are just that — new — and it’s a truism that no friend is replaceable.
So when I look at the fashionable American nomad, hopping from city to city in pursuit of a higher salary, and compare him to the coal miner who stays in the same polluted town all his life, I wonder who’s really poor.
STOP. Bet you think I’m being sentimental. You’ve heard that Mother Teresa misquote about rich lonely people being “spiritually” the poorest of the poor, (whatever that means, you think with a sleepy nod) and you think I’m veering off down some familiar, melancholy, foggy path of vague whines about a Better Way. Fear not, we’ll stick to Facts.
Starvation is a fact. Few Americans face it. Horrid, degrading, incessant work is a fact. Many Americans face that, and many more people face it elsewhere, worse, often at the hands of American companies. The rich (and most of the middle class) face neither of those facts, and when you think of hunger or drudgery, a gripe about loneliness can seem petty.
But one man’s blindness doesn’t cure another’s poor eyesight. Loneliness is a fact, and many writers have grown quite alarmed that so many Americans make loneliness a way of life. You’ve heard the causes — we hunt jobs, we watch TV, we lack community spaces, we drink a daily dose of fear from the media — but no one ever seems to propose a solution.
They merely say we should get out more, join a club…in essence, go buy some friends. Sure, if you’re stuck somewhere, you should make friends, but I think there’s more. In fact, I’m waiting for a lamenting writer to say:
Friends and family are so darn important that if your company demands that you transfer to another state, get fired.
When I hear that, I’ll believe they care about community. Until then, it appears that the final law at the heart of the universe is: (drum roll please…)
Keep Your Job, or Get One That Pays More.
Isn’t that beautiful?
Naturally, it’s easy for a twenty-four-year-old living on his capital to learn farming to be flippant about getting fired. My perspective would be vastly different were I forty with five kids and aging skills. The fight would be harder. But is it worth fighting for? Would it be worth a severe “economic setback” to stay in the same area with people I’d known for twenty years? Does community exist, and is it worth losing money for?
Right now, I miss people, and I’m ready to answer yes.
Because money is a means. That’s a fact, though you wouldn’t think it these days (like, since the Fall). On the scale of being, money is lower than, among other things, food, marriage, friendship, the Grand Canyon, and koosh balls. Money is a way to get some of those things, but it’s less than any of them.
Watch, it’s true. Imagine being locked in a bank vault for a month. See?
On its own, money is at best shiny metal and at worst data in a bank computer. That is what money actually is. Among humans with anything to sell, money has the pleasant additional feature of giving you the power to get some of their stuff, or get them to do something for you.
But that’s it. That’s all it is. Yet who of us isn’t steeped with the idea that we ought to do whatever we can (stopping at various moral guardrails) to get as much money as we can? Who of us wouldn’t feel vaguely wrong to reject a boring job (say, patent law) at 200 grand for a fun job (like acting) at 20? Unless you’re convinced that you’ll be positively flushed and ecstatic with your cash on evenings and weekends, isn’t it weird to choose to be miserable with such monotonous regularity?
Obvious, right? It must not be, considering how most folks live.
(Now that I live on a farm, I’m allowed to say ‘folks’. No one else here does, and someone ought to.)
Money has an unnatural hold on our imagination. Nothing is permitted to break this hold, except perhaps (in movies) love. You’re allowed to forsake a fortune for your girl. But you’re not allowed to turn down a drab job for the sake of fifteen friends, a smattering of relatives, and a place you’ve grown to like. That is considered Really Stupid.
Well, it’s Manifestly Idiotic to give up everything we like best for money. What do you like best? People, I bet. Maybe you like your family, but at least you like your friends. You like that quirky crowd of irreplaceable individuals who without even trying bring you closer than anything can to the eternal festival.
Compare a night with friends or family to anything else (besides marriage)…a raise, a hefty insurance policy, a mansion, a nice car, a plasma TV. Anything measure up yet? I don’t feel it. All the things that make us happiest are precisely the things that those numbers on your account statement are singuarly poor-equipped to provide.
And yet adulthood comes, and joyous college companions flash into darkness like fireworks, and the Cubicle Conspiracy pounces, and we are left in a strange, flourescent place where our new masters promise to pay our student loans and overcharge us for insurance if only we will stay put, talk softly, grow a large behind, and be ready to go into exile at their whim.
Must we accept? Is this deal in our favor? Must we renounce the best parts of life for so paltry a boon? If those we love are always so far away, are they so different from being dead? Are we so different from Gilgamesh?
Maybe. I guess we move so much there’s always that chance a couple of us will wind up in the same place. And the irony is, I myself am preparing to move again.
For there is a place for being a pioneer. Much to my chagrin, I happen to be in that place. Both my family and that of my wife live in areas that are blighted by industry and its attendant flowers of traffic, crime, nuclear power plants, and insane real estate prices. By the time we find affordable land in a place that stands a chance of being a setting for a lovely childhood, we probably won’t be too near either family.
But we will be in a place worth staying at. And we’ll stay. If I must make new friends, I intend to keep them. And there are many they will never replace.
