Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?

Picture this: you're walking the streets of Florence, Italy with a group of 3 of your friends. As you meander through the maze of cobble stone, you stumble upon a porcelain shop. Standing behind the counter is this girl whose beauty is so traditional, so simplistically perfect you can't look away. Her long, soft brown hair cascades down the sides of her face, rolls off her shoulders, and hangs lightly at the mid of her back. Her pale brown eyes shoot through yours, now humbly bowing in shame as you and your crew nervously file into the small family-run store. For a moment, as you float past porcelain-clad walls towards the register, you feel as though everything else has fallen away. She speaks. It's English but with a northern Italian accent that softens the harsh Germanic words to their dullest edge. Her voice is dark and deep, not what you expected, but it lures you closer. "Hello. Can I show you anything?"

later

The four of us are standing on the Pointe Vecchio watching the sun as it paints the sky an awesome burnt orange and pink on its final decent over the Arno River. Her words are echoing in my head, "Can I show you anything?" "Why yes, I think you can." We all just stand and gaze at the beauty before us and reflect on the beauty we'd just encountered when suddenly, and almost to my chagrin, my one friend poses the question...

"If you could live with that girl, 'China Girl', here, on this bridge, forever, never to return to the United States again, would you do it?"

We all stand in silence to consider. I think it over...and over...and over. On that bridge, I stood in one of the most perfect places I'd ever been. Nothing could argue with that. The warm summer breeze on my face, leaning over the edge of the bridge, nothing could replace that carefree feeling of freedom. But could I stand to never return to the United States and all the loved ones she possesses? At that time I had been traveling for 5 weeks and was feeling a bit homesick. My answer then: No. But as I sit behind the desk in my tiny New York cubical, surrounded by overstressed bosses, underpaid workers and a culture obsessed with work for the sake of working, I am forced to reconsider my decision.

In fact, if my friend asked me that question right now, I would say "100% yes," and I would never look back. For me Italy represents a return to the simple. Yes, to live there you must forgo some of the luxuries of American living (i.e. guaranteed service at any time, in basically any store through out New York), but the return, is far greater than the sacrifice. Having worked an all-American corporate "9-5" job I can say from experience that our system is flawed. Yes, working is good. I'm a firm believer in capitalism. But the purpose of working should not be lost in the work itself. That is, one shouldn't work simply to work. One should work to live, not the other way around. I want to enjoy the ride that is my life while I'm young enough to really live it, not slave through 40 years so that I can enjoy the end in moderate comfort. Who knows if I'll even make it that long! The purpose of work is to give a feeling of accomplishment to your every day. Yes it's a means to maintain, but more so, I feel work should be a way to contribute.

So would I abandon my American roots to run off with a gorgeous Italian on the Pointe Vecchio, running a small porcelain shop day in and day out? Yes, yes I would. I would say goodbye to SUV's on open roads, baseball at Citi Field, friends and family, if it meant a life concentrated on achieving gratification rather than wasting hours in an office building. There are so many things going on outside of the gray box that is corporate America, I cannot even fathom why I would waste another second sitting here. And yet, we stay.

So I ask you, what would you do? Would you stay, or would you go? Take a risk, or play it safe? The choice is yours. Personally, I'm thinking it's about time to take a risk. The way I see it, if you don't act fast, the things you once despised for being mundane will become the norms you slavishly can't live without. If that's what America is all about, then I say, no thanks.