I recently read one of the most insightful pieces on an America's view of living in Europe and on socialism that I have ever come across. In his article, Going Dutch, written for the Times Magazine, Russell Shorto details his impressions as an American living in Holland. Many aspects of this piece resonate quite strongly with me as an American living in a small city in Normandy, France. But it was towards the end of the article when I came across a section that instantly clarified the bulk of my frustrations concerning living in France:
It's true that I have grown to appreciate many aspects of this system. But honestly compels me to reveal another side. There is a mood that settles into me here, deepening by degrees until its deepness has become darkness. It happens typically on a Sunday afternoon. I'll be strolling through a neighborhood on the outskirts of Amsterdam, or cycling in a nearby small town, and the calm, bland streets and succession of broad windows giving views onto identical interiors will awaken in my mind a line form Camus's "Myth of Sisyphus" that struck me to the core when I first read it as an undergraduate: "A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show: you wonder why he is alive."
This is my overwhelming experience of Rouen. The seeming contentment with the status quo, of those people to whom the question, "Where would you like to travel?" makes no sense, confronts one with the absurdity of existence. Shorto calls it an "existential rage" and rage seems an appropriate description. Any given Sunday I will be walking to the grocery store before it closes at 1pm and I will pass shoppers briskly walking down the sidewalk, almost running me over, and I constantly return to that nagging question: Where are you going? I've remarked many times about a paradox I have experienced in France. It is true that the French are much better dressed than Americans. But for whom do they dress? Where are they going to be seen?
The French cherish their free time. They cherish the hour-long lunch breaks and the three hour conversations held over beer or coffee after work. But where are they going? What is the point? What is the point of an evening off when the stores close at 6pm, precisely the time when I may want to buy something or perhaps peruse your wares? These laws put in place to protect the workers and laborers, of scheduling short hours, mandatory days off, and long lunch breaks, a sign of social progress perhaps, but also a huge retardant to daily progress, of daily activities. I am confronted with the absurdity of existence here.
I do not see struggle here like I do in the United States. I do not see the poverty or wealth gap. I see contentment. But with such contentment I do not see drive, I do not see passion, and I do not feel motivated to create or think. I often find myself seeking out escapist activities -- mostly watching television and reading books. I do not see a point in my existence here. I feel caught in a strange limbo where time has stood still. The temperature has not dramatically decreased since I arrived over three months ago. Everyday it is clouds and rain. Everyday I go to the grocery store. Everyday I exist. But why? The sense of struggle I used to have has gone and I am left somewhat empty.
Perhaps it is a particularly American view to think that contentment breeds mediocrity. This isn't me siding with those conservatives who lament over "creeping socialism," or is it? It is true that I have seen many positives about the way of life here I want to bring home with me to America. Living abroad the excesses and selfishness of much of the American way of life becomes absurdly obvious. The French do not waste food, they do not waste water, and they cherish that face to face time with family and friends as well as time to simply do nothing and think. But I cannot help but be troubled by those students of mine who look at me with bewilderment when I ask them if any of them would like to live somewhere other than Rouen. Where is the drive? Where is the curiosity?
Then again, what is wrong with being happy where you are? I can only speak from my limited and subjective viewpoint, but I find life in the struggle. I am more alive struggling with a painting that I hate, that I just cannot get right, than I am gazing contently on a piece that is "good enough." So does contentment breed mediocrity? Is it better to lean towards a socialist perspective? To tax high, to spread the wealth out evenly, so everyone is at a general level of contentment? Or is it better to struggle to the top, in a system that favors entrepreneurs and passionate go-getters, where the chances of succeeding are made more difficult and less likely, but with greater rewards to be had? This is a delicate question. Is it moral to insist on "one for all" or "all for one"? I don't believe I have an answer.
Perhaps this satisfaction out of struggle is merely an illusion. Perhaps that man you see talking on the telephone in Amsterdam, behind that class partition, has just as little to say as that one speeding down the streets of Manhattan, racing to his next meeting. This is probably true. Life does go on in Rouen just about the same as it does in suburban Pennsylvania. But for now I still have a taste for struggle and purpose and I cannot wait to get back to it.
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