On Living Locally and Seeking Continuity

I was having a political discussion with a friend over email, and in response to something I wrote he replied: "You know, it's really starting to show that you haven't been out of the US in almost a year." Ouch... But the "insult" aside, I realised he was correct: I haven't been out of the country since last July, which is unusual for me. Moreover, we have been without a car since December, making our travel radius limited to cycleable distances. Without explicitly being aware of it, I have transitioned from living "globally" to living "locally," and my friend's insinuation was that this has made me narrow-minded and provincial. Has it? I think not, but I also realise that I don't really care. My quality of life has improved as a result of the changes I've made since last year, and that's difficult to argue with.

We could go on forever debating the "moral" and "social responsibility" implications of living locally vs globally. On the one hand, those who lead lifestyles that rely on air travel are doing a great deal of damage to the environment. On the other hand, one could argue that some international jobs are "important" in their contribution to society, and the scale of this contribution outweighs the degree of environmental damage. But the trouble with these arguments, is that they inevitably lead us to a slippery slope. Who determines what's important? Who has the right to pass that judgment on others, and using what criteria? Are UN workers "good," but fashion reporters "evil"?  Is it "wrong to endanger the environment" by traveling to Shanghai just for fun, or is that outweighed by the positive effect of experiencing another culture, growing more tolerant and open-minded as a result? Impossible to say, without imposing our subjective sense of logic on others' sovereignty, which is not something I wish to do.

But the issue of living locally vs globally has personal, psychological implications as well, and these have been on my mind lately. I have an unusual personal history, and have basically never lived in any one place for more than several years at a time. As a result, my life has been fragmented and unstable, which I do not feel is ultimately good for me. When I remember things from my past, I sometimes get confused about the location of an event, and even about the language that was spoken. With my friends, relatives, experiences and memories scattered all over the world, it is difficult to maintain a sense of continuity and even a coherent sense of self. Forming healthy attachments to new people and places is challenging, and replacing the physical reality of personal interaction with virtual communications is isolating.

As we lose our sense of "continuous living," our notions of contact grow increasingly abstract - and not just contact with other people, but contact with our surroundings. I remember a post by Dottie at Let's Go Ride a Bike some time ago, where she describes the lifestyle of her family in the North Carolina suburbs as "traveling from pod to pod." The home is a pod. The workplace is another pod. The restaurant, also a pod. And because of the vast, highway-navigated distances between each, there is no clear sense of what happens in between; it is kind of a dead space, almost a virtual space. I found this imagery to be both frightening and relatable - a reflection of my own anxieties about what our lifestyles are doing to the way we connect with the physical world.

I thought that I might feel limited and stir-crazy once I stopped traveling abroad, and even more so once we began living without a car. Instead I am feeling as if some long-neglected human aspect of me is waking up. Living locally and all that it entails - seeing the same people, experiencing the change of seasons while staying put, and developing a feel for manageable distances - is giving me a sense of continuity that I have been lacking.