Fast forward, I’m standing still

"How much is a human life worth?" is not an uncommon question in development economics. Every day for the last month I’ve been dealing with this question when investigating the measures used for compensating people in the case of loss of lives, livelihoods, culture and social safety nets. What is the market value of living in a reciprocal economy? What is the going price for close family ties? The dams that I am reading up on have both human costs and benefits, but no one can agree on how to measure them. Thankfully.

The value of human life made headlines in Norwegian news today. A representative of the Progress Party entered an opinion in my local newspaper arguing for the abortion of handicapped children. Carrying handicapped children into this world is repulsive, she writes.  Although some argue that handicapped children help create a richer and more including society, she does not see this need - this selfish need. She sees costs. Knowingly giving birth to children that will cost the society a tremendous amount of money in health care and equipment is selfish. We have more important things to spend the tax payers’ money on. And is it really fair to those around you? Your conscience should tell you that this will be too time consuming and too costly. Its just not fair to society.

Economic arguments and estimates are the basis upon which to genetically cleanse our society.

I don’t think I need to add anything to this.  

 

This was supposed to be an entry on the ridiculousness of American bureaucracy. About queuing up outside the embassy, about queuing up inside, in front, behind, waiting, waiting, waiting .. About having to stand through your interview like a criminal, guilty until proven innocent, for then to be denied entry into the US for choosing the wrong letter for your visa but have your rejection letter say something completely different.

Instead I think this is an entry about doing the right things for the right reasons, or the right things for the wrong reasons, perhaps. Seeing my future roll away from me like the tide rolling back out to sea, I question why I am doing this. I know the obvious answer. For my career. For the experience. For leaving London. But why? Its not going to last, and as an intending immigrant having to prove she isnt one, the finishing line is visible ahead of me.

I knew why I wouldnt do it. And I also knew that other alternatives were out of the question. This or nothing. If I lose this, what is the nothing that I will be facing? I would have to create new alternatives. Possibly exciting ones, but I’d rather not go there.

This doesnt make sense to you, does it? It doesnt really to me either. Some things you just know .. Or just feel. And like that, I know that this is the only right move for me to take, even if it should turn out to be the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. It could have been anywhere, it could have been anything, but right now, its just this. In five months, it will be something else.

Sorting through all the things I’ve accumulated over the last year, I’ve made a discovery. For someone living so carelessly in the past, I’ve been planning so carefully for the future.

I have ready remedies for accidents that never happen and illnesses that never fall.

I have books in languages I dont speak but hope that I one day will.

I have pins and paper clips and markers and coloured stickers for the day that I’d sort out my papers. (The academic year is over).  

I have special clothes for special occassions that never come around. Perhaps I should change my idea of what constitutes a special occassion. The night I wear the black dress wont be the most fabulous party of the year and the night I wear the red lingerie wont be the one where he loves me the most.  

Of course, this leads me to experiment. A more spartan life has started. Now accidents can happen and I wont have any band aids. If someone asks me to translate into Spanish, I cant look it up. And to the party, I will wear something that is not in my closet now. Perhaps I’ll be surprised. Perhaps.  

 

3 and a half weeks ahead of time, I am preparing to say goodbye to London. Well, actually, I am not preparing, I am already saying goodbye. I have sorted everything in my bathroom. I have sorted my bookshelf and my movies. I now have one compartment for what I am bringing, one for what I’m sending home and one for what I’ll give to someone else.

I’ve made a list of all the things I want to do before I go. Most of them are things I’ll be doing for the first time. That’s a funny way of saying goodbye - by introducing new things into your life.
I’m making plans to see people that I haven’t really seen for months - I am leaving, after all.

All these preperations, will they be worth it? Will they make my departure easier, or will they just add to my longing for London? What if I had just left one day, without notice, would it have made it better or worse? There’s no telling. I am doing what you are supposed to do, what everyone does. 3 and a half weeks is nothing, not with a dissertation to write and preparations to make. It’s all got to be done.

London has been good to me, but there is relief in the thought of leaving. Once again.

Its ten o’clock, I’ve worked all day, reached my goal of 3000 out of 8000 words. I’ve had dinner. I’ve cleaned my room. No one is at home. There is nothing to do, so I decide to pour myself a big glass of wine and read some poetry to brush up on my Spanish. I get my wine and my book, I light some candles, turn off the lights, and crawl into bed. I’m ready.

I take more than a moderate sip of my wine .. and spit it out all over the floor. The wine’s become vinegar, I feel like I just drank a bottle of french dressing. Now that’s what I call disappointment. Fuck it, I’m going to sleep.

 

We were both leaning over to get a look at the pictures I’d uploaded, silly drunken pictures from the night before. An arrow drawn onto my back pointing down towards my lovely little behind. Very funny. And then we looked a little closer. And a little further up, right about .. there. We looked at each other, he laughs, I turn red, both remembering the conversation a few days back. "Eh .. when you do it like that .. Does it ever happen that it kinda leaves a .. ?", he’d asked me, I assume from recent personal experience. A delicate question, but we’re not delicate people.

And there it was, the thing that I had thought didn’t happen. So clear in the photograph. I reached for my back, up under my t-shirt, and Damn! I even felt it!

So there you go. You think relationships leave you with emotional scars, with painful memories and that stinging feeling in your stomach, and you think that’s enough already. Well, if you’re lucky, you might even be left with a seemingly permanent physical souvenir to remind you of those warmer days. Cheers to being branded, I suppose?

 

1. Don’t think that you are special.
2. Don’t think that you are of the same standing as us.
3. Don’t think that you are smarter than us.
4. Don’t fancy yourself as being better than us.
5. Don’t think that you know more than us.
6. Don’t think that you are more important than us.
7. Don’t think that you are good at anything.
8. Don’t laugh at us.
9. Don’t think that anyone cares about you.
10. Don’t think that you can teach us anything.

Does this sound like something you’d want to face every day? No? As a Norwegian, you most probably have to. The Jante law, described by Aksel Sandemose in 1933 as the common Scandinavian mentality, is often thought of as a thing of the past - but it still lives in Norway, alongside the Jealousy. Oh, the Jealousy and the Envy.

Living as a Norwegian in exile can be extremely liberating. It’s okay to fuck up. It’s okay to state your ambitions and fail to reach them. It’s okay to state your ambitions full stop. As a Norwegian in Norway, you have no ambitions. You have no dreams. You are no one. You keep it to yourself, and you excuse yourself and play it down should you succeed in anything. No, I am not a good cello player, you say, even if you play in the orchestra. No, I can’t sing, even if you do it professionally. 

Back home, I dont want to work for the UN. The New York thing just sort of fell into my lap, its no big deal really, I dont really care, I am not that excited about it. Honestly.

No, I am proud of what I am, what I’ve done and where I am going. I want to do well, I want to do better than what I am doing now, but Shush! Dont tell any norwegians - they are cutting down the tall poppies.  

Maybe that’s why I am never content. Why a good grade never makes me happy. Because I am not supposed to be happy, because I am no better than anyone else - I am equally good.

I love my country. I love the mountains, the trees, the long sandy beaches. I love the strawberries and the prawns, the taxes and the benefits. I love that "The important thing is not to win, but to participate" as opposed to "Second place is for the first loser", but I think I’ve had enough. My country needs ambition, it needs competition, it needs something to push it forward, to reach it’s potential. Even though it’s rated the best country in the world, there is far to go, there are many things to achieve. If only we weren’t restraining ourselves in constant fair of public opinion. 

I love my country, but I won’t be going back. 18 months is long enough to realize that I don’t belong anymore. I want to say all that I have to say, I want to work towards my goals without doing it in the dark and without feeling shame should I reach them - or even worse, should I fail to reach my outspoken beliefs and be ridiculed. So, you thought you were better than us?

I don’t think I’m better. I don’t think I am in a position to teach them anything. I just think that I am me and they are them and that they prevent us from coexisting.

I love Norway - but I’m not Norwegian.

Last night I had a surprising dream. It was me, quite clearly, living with an Indian family, a large family. With my Indian husband and our newborn. There were new parents, new brothers and sisters, their partners and children. All living under one roof.

It sounds like a nightmare, to me.

But I loved it. I loved being surrounded by all the people, I loved helping my mother-in-law cook dinner, seeing my daughter’s cousins take care of her .. I loved caring for so many people and not just myself. Privacy was not an issue - I didn’t need it. I had everything I desired, and I was entirely content.

My first thought when I woke up was that the wretched Devdas had jumped from my computer screen during the course of the night and that his not-quite-that-handsome black-and-white-and-very-thickbrowed features had somehow poisened the mind of this individual-centred feminist, that he had triggered in me some need to be subservient, to wish for a place at his feet. But while Paro is an idiot, I am not.

Instead, I return, as usual, to the so often recurring question; what would my therapist friend say? (I’ve never asked her any of my question, but I clearly hear her responding to them). She would say that "You dont believe that you, as an individual, is deserving of specific attention". She would say that "Your family never expected anything from you, they never demanded everything, they let you go your own ways. This is your way of showing your gratefulness or perhaps even your guilt for not giving anything back". I take great pleasure in these quasi-psychological artificial dialogues. But maybe I am just realising that its time that I become part of something greater than myself. Or simply that the country that broke me and then re-made me still has its hold on me, its still pulling on me, nudging me, trying to tell me something. Simply. Maybe.  

In February, many things happened. One of them took place in the British Museum.
I met someone. An Angel - a psychic. I am not one of those who believe. But I was bored. So I listened.

I listened to all of my past lives - all much more eventful than the one I lead this time around.

But I also learned about my future. I was wrong, Angel said, to believe that my future lay in India, or anywhere in Asia. Obviously, I had not told him that was where I was headed. Angel said I was headed in the opposite direction - "Your future is in America".

I had forgotten all about Angel, about all of his predictions and all of his well-intended opening of my shakras. But today, after walking the parts of London I have carefully avoided because of the memories they carry, and the British Museum once again caught my eye, I remembered. It’s all coming true. All of his visions are becoming reality. Next month I’ll be in America.  As for his other visions .. I dare not consider the possibilities.

I wonder, did I have a say in this? Did I do this - because of what I’d been told - or did this happen to me?