Costs

I am in a bus in Chaisso on the Italian/Swiss border. I have just passed from the Swiss side to the Italian side of town an I swear it looks different, grittier and more crowded. Even the police at the border (who waved us through, although everyone had their passports in their hand in response to something the bus driver called out in Italian) are scruffy on the Italian side and polished and stiff looking on the French side. National differences are funky anyway, but national differences on border towns even more interesting, I think. I could have made my career studying just that. I’m on my way to the airport to catch a plane to England. The conference is behind me, like Switzerland, fading into the distance. A Subject-Object Interview workshop is ahead of me. We’ll see how I go with it all.

My days here at the conference have made me think about opportunity costs. On the one hand, this has been a perfectly good way to spend three days. I have had interesting conversations more times than not. I have reconnected with a friend from grad school and met really interesting people. I have stayed in an old villa and eaten food so beautiful that it was hard to believe it was connected in any way to any kind of institution.

And I’m wrestling with regret, which I think of as one of the big toxic emotions. The conference was a decent way to spend three days, but (in the business jargon I have learnt to speak) I think the return on investment will be low and the opportunity costs are high. I have not in the past given lots of thought to the idea of opportunity costs, but for some reason, right now my mind is full of the idea. Why this focus on what I gave up in order to have what I have? Is it that I have missed out on two weeks of Carolyn and Jim’s last month? Is it that I have missed out on two weeks with my kids and family? Is it that I have spent oodles of money at a time when we own an entire house more than we want and we can’t seem to sell it? In any case, I’m noticing the way choices I make to do something good are choices I make NOT to do any number of other lovely things. That idea is making me unhappy right now.

My birthday is next week and perhaps that has made me more aware that each thing I do means limitless things I did not do. I have had dark and spinning moments over the last several days about that limitless set of things I cannot do. Three days with academics makes me wonder about my choice to not currently be an academic. Three days with American intellectuals makes me wonder about leaving the US. Three days travelling through beautiful towns in Italy makes me wonder why we picked New Zealand and not Europe. And so on. I spin about the children I will never have, the places I will never live, the jobs I will never do. And somehow as the regret floodgate opens around this trip to Europe to come to this conference, the rushing river of all the choices I’ve ever made washes over the island of my life, leaving me muddy and wet in the aftermath.

I have a life that is pretty fantastic. If I had known this was what 38 would have looked like, I’d have been in less terrible turmoil in my teens. But with all of that, there is a ticking of the clock that is somehow louder than I’ve heard it before. It is both a celebration—look where you are!—and also a warning—don’t let me get away from you. Choose wisely because you will not have this time back again.

The Buddhists think that attachment is the root of suffering. I am attached to notions of what else I could have done these weeks, and I am suffering because of that. I am attached to the idea that this conference was going to a chance for developmentalists to talk to one another, and I am suffering because the many different theoretical perspectives in the room meant we did a whole lot more wheel spinning than theory building. It has been what it is, and now it is over. I do not yet know how my life will be different because of my time here. I have made the decisions I have made to be at this place in my life at this time in my life. I spend most of my time with people I love doing work that I enjoy in the most beautiful place in the world. It seems almost inconceivable that I could harbour regrets about this, that I could be so spoiled or self indulgent as to look across the landscape of my life and think maybe there’s something to not feel good about. Ah, but this is the hidden majesty of the human brain, one of the pieces that separates us from other animals, that builds in us the ambition that has changed the shape of this planet forever. We hold to both now and then—and we have images of a real past, a possible different past, and all these multiple futures. I am noticing those possible futures crowd around me and be replaced by one actual present. The root of suffering is to be attached to alternate visions of what might have happened in the actual present. I am in Italy now, in suburbs that combine old frescoed buildings with ugly bland modern ones, with the mountains in the background and graffiti in the foreground. I am in Italy in its gritty fullness on a day clothed in a thick grey coat. I am a single English speaker on a bus of Italians travelling through suburbs. Where I have been and where I am going are contested and changing. Where I am is Italy. Vive ora.