lesson 33: sometimes whims are wise

"When I was thirty-three I had a mental image of myself, working behind a desk, seeing the same context all of the time, in the same city, following the same routines, slowly widening in my chair, entering into middle age wearing nubby polyester sweaters and becoming nondescript and completely ... bored, having never seen or done anything but what I knew, surrounded by those who thought they know me. Having never lived any where else."

"That is terrifying, so what did you do?"

"At the time, I didn't really have the money to travel as extensively as I'd like, so I knew that whatever I did I would have to work, so I drafted a list of cities around the world that I'd like to live in and started sending out resumes."

"Um, Ingrid."

"Yeah."

"That doesn't sound very 'whimsical'. In fact, it sounds uncharacteristically purposeful and deliberate."

"It felt whimsical."

"Oh."

"So I got a whole bunch of replies one of which was from a company in Amsterdam, where I interviewed, accepted the job and then moved."

"Still missing the whimsy part here."

"It was the ... the speed of the move, that I left everything quickly not knowing what to expect, and just did it, on my own."

"Again, I see a little self-sufficiency, some assertiveness about what you wanted, but not really whimsy."

"Huh."

"What."

"I always thought of the move as whimsy."

"Maybe you are wiser than you think."