Should I stay or should I go?

Many people spend their childhoods dreaming of a way out into the world. And their adulthoods dreaming of a way back in. There is always the balance of being too confined or too alone. I think this balance is important, not just for me, but because the trend today is towards going. Understandably, this is becoming the case here in the Czech Republic, where going was not really much of an option for so many decades. Once going is possible – Is it really better to stay or go?

It is undoubtedly thrilling to be out all alone, far from memory and home. Most of my school friends have arranged their lives in a whole different world from the one we shared during childhood. They have lived in different places, and had several „lives“ along the way. Families are for visiting and Home, the first home, is a long way away.

I think this represents quite a normal approach to staying and doing in the UK. However, I noticed a marked difference with the “traditional” Czech way on first arrival here. People kept asking me if I was breaking my mother’s heart to be so far away. Parents here seemed keen to keep their children close. It was the first time the question of staying was presented to me.

 The magic of this arrangement, of staying, impressed me. Visiting friends in their country paradises was like returning to my own magic childhood days. I loved the feeling of belonging, of being looked after, of being deeply involved with people, the same people, as the year turned its course.

But many Czechs have chosen the “go” way too. The Czech community in New Zealand and of ex-au-pairs in England testifies to that. I wonder how they handle that tension with the “stay” mentality still very much prevalent in this country. If they feel guilty for being so far away, beyond Sunday visits and name days. So again – should we stay or should we go?

Go go go!

Leaving everything behind, for a good long time, allows you to really and fundamentally change in a way you cannot do if tied to home with one arm all the time. I think the university example is key. My Dad used to say that if you don’t leave home when you go to university, you never will. How can you open yourself up totally to new experiences, dare to become someone new entirely,  if you leave your new city every Thursday for home, childhood and the known? Weekends at home keep you ever tied in to the person who you were.

Of course, leaving home far behind brings a huge sense of freedom. I can empathise with Rilke’s, urge to “throw yourself out of the tangle of family” and breathe free air. It is possible that many kids of the “stay” persuasion don’t feel that pressure, that feeling of being confined and defined by family. And therefore they have no urge to leave. Though I do have my suspicions. Surely there are only so many times you can be quizzed about school, study or work. Or asked when the grandchildren will be on the way.

In addition, my suspicion is that families who “stay together” and live on top of one another all the time are likely to bicker. They fight over small details because they have no space for themselves.  They cannot see the glory and uniqueness of the other family member behind the tangle of annoyances that surround them. And maybe that space is needed to make families

work.

 If your children are too close to you, it is hard to see them as individuals. Maybe there is some benefit to birthing children of a different culture to your own. Andre Gidé once philosophised about his wish to raise children on different shores, fed from different foods to those which fed him and made of entirely different stuff to himself. Even for less artistic temperaments, families are unlikely to encourage freedom where parents think they know their children, even when they become adults.  The truth, that these are actually unknown and different adults, is maybe clearer when children grow up in a different culture to that of their parents. Or when they go away for a long time.

Reasons to stay

But when it comes to children, there are many good things about staying too. Closeness to family, when it works, can be a primeval joy and one of those simple sources of happiness which many people crave in the modern world. It is deeper and greater than the more complicated happinesses we try to fill our lives with. I imagine it must be a massive sense of stability to move through the many different roles we play in life in the same place. To watch yourself move from pupil to parent to pensioner, against the same backdrop. Alongside many others on the same road, at their various stages.

And the most blindingly obvious fact is that this staying isn’t just good for individuals but the family too. With all of us scattered all over the place, many typical unspoken agreements are broken. Agreements that we will have the chance to pay our parents back for their care by caring for them. Agreements that we started out together and will stay, to some extent, on the same track. And though I signed nothing, gave nobody my word, I do feel a sense of an obligation avoided. It is also hard to stop being a child when you don’t have the opportunity to step into the adult role and start giving back.

To some, leaving their home would be a loss of their self. In which case nothing that could be gained along the way is worth it. I most envy those whose best friends are school friends. Meeting old friends is, for me, a joy similar to sunny Autumn days or good wine, an unbelievable blessing. I envy those who grew up together and raised their kids side by side, like many do in the small seaside town where I am from.

Where’s the middle way?

I think the ideal would be to go away, for a good long time, and then come back to where you started from. Most myths and stories point to this path of return. But in reality, it is fairly impossible. Most of us can’t just break up our new lives at some point and make the pilgrimage back to our families and home towns (if they are still where we left them). In general, we set out as young people on our paths and don’t really know where we will end up, or at what point we will come home, if ever.

It is important to state that this line of questioning is, of course, a rare luxury in our modern world, where many children in all countries grow up in families where escape is the only option. Where millions of families are shattered and scattered by violence, war or poverty and would stay or go absolutely anywhere where their children might be safe and have a chance of a future.

The lucky ones, who do have the freedom to choose, possibly come to the eventual realisation that either going or staying are not that important in themselves. As the journey was always inside anyhow. It is, as we know, often necessary to go away to realise what we want to come back to. But it’s a pity we can’t just make that realisation where we were at the start. Because wherever we find ourselves in reality, set between the two ideal scales of freedom and belonging, it’s sometimes too late to come back.