My Dad doesn't know this but he created a bit of a monster a couple of weeks ago when he offered to lend me a down payment for a house. My very first thought was, "No way! I can't handle a whole house!" After two minutes of thinking like that, I fell in love with the idea. My very own spot in the world that could belong all to me! I could unpack all of the boxes that I have been lugging around my whole life, hang pictures and maybe even paint the walls colors that I chose! I could stay there forever!
Having moved a few times in my life I'm ready to have a place where I can live in stationary peace with my things and my dog.
With no cardboard boxes in sight.
I've pondered this constantly since, and I've come to wonder whether my true reason for wanting to buy a house has less to do with finally grasping the stability that I have always craved and more to do with forcing that life upon myself. My conservative gypsy life-style has bred in me a desire to be constantly moving, breathing in new experiences and people, and simply existing in places outside of my previous comfort zones. Can a person long for stability and instability at the same time? I think my fear of my desire to pick up and leave is what is driving my competing desire to buy a house, and root myself in Minnesota.
"Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."
--Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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