If you had seen the three of us yesterday morning sipping lattes around a small table adorned with blue and yellow print, eyeing the pastries while the trams rattled past, you might have thought we were in Fontainebleau or Melbourne. Either would have been a good guess. The dark-eyed waiter spoke with a French accent. And all three of us spoke with Australian ones. Not much about the scene spelled San Diego, but that's where we were.
Two traveling husbands spelled girls' weekend away. And girls' weekend away spelled breakfast out. And while you might have thought a Saturday breakfast would spell sleepy chatter about our families, our men, or our plans for the day, it didn't. It meant focusing on the one topic we all needed to debrief before we could wander along the marina, or through Little Italy, or into Victoria's Secret (where I will later dust myself and whoever is standing nearby with body glitter - something that never fails to amuse - and then find the scented candles and wonder how I can go about getting paid to come up with phrases like, "the spicy allure of warm blackberries suggests languid summer love in the grass").
No. Before the marina and Little Italy, and definitely before body glitter and languid summer love in the grass, we needed to talk work.
This takes a while. Leah is a composer. She's currently finishing up a year as a Fulbright Scholar at USC, negotiating a music licensing contract, and drafting a national arts grant application. Erica is a post-doctoral scientist at UCLA's focusing on HIV, cancer, and stress. Since her field of psychoneuroimmunology is so specialized it doesn't exist in my spell-checker, I'm not sure why I still get surprised when Erica says things like, "next week I really need to order the primers of metastasis-related genes to test timing effects of nadolol," and I don't have a clue what she's talking about.
When it's my turn to update the others on the last week I lead off with; "I'm in the middle of launching a global program called CARD to register mental health professionals worldwide who are interested in working with humanitarian workers."
Then I sigh and tell the whole truth. "It might sound glamorous, but it mostly comes down to a lot of emailing."
I think about the last week and sigh again.
There are many things I love about my job and at times it can certainly bring adventure, but what I don't talk about nearly as often are the weeks when I do little more than write emails. Emails to the keynote speakers for the symposium I am organizing in Baltimore. Emails to the Kenya and Ghana programs trying to get them to confirm their workshop dates in October. Emails to yet another Africa-based program trying to get them to choose between Kenya and Tanzania for their workshops – and that's before we even get to the dates issue. And, lately, there has been an endless stream of emails to publicize the existence of CARD. If we can get the word out there widely enough, I might be able to answer yes the next time someone in crises contacts us asking whether we know of any counselors in Cameroon.
Erica and Leah would cheerfully listen to me describe what spending the last week sending emails has been like. They would ask intelligent questions about the programs, and how I'm structuring my day to help me stay focused and motivated. They would be genuinely interested. Erica and Leah are legends.
But it's Saturday morning. Suddenly I don't want to whine about emails. Suddenly, I don't even want to think about emails.
"What would you do if you weren't doing what you're doing?" I asked them instead. "I mean, if you were living an alternate life. What would you do?"
I don't quite know what I expected them to say; it just wasn't something so sensible.
"Maybe I'd teach," Leah said thoughtfully.
"I could be a consultant," Erica said. "No more lab coats. Bring on suits and high heels. What about you?"
"I'd own a pizza shop in Ballina," I said.
Erica and Leah did not laugh. They did, however, look at me in a way that made it clear they weren't sure whether I was serious.
"Okay, not a pizza shop, exactly ," I said. "An Italian restaurant with white linen tablecloths, a wood-fired oven, and tall candles lodged in wine bottles. The scent of fresh garlic bread would season the air while my customers dine on homemade pumpkin ravioli in a sage and brown butter sauce topped with creamy curls of fresh parmesan."
I was making myself hungry – no small feat considering I had just polished off two crepes slathered in nutella. I wondered if it would be bad form to lick out the nutella pot. Probably. I swiped the edge of it with my finger and licked that instead.
I think about alternate lives a lot. Growing up, I spent days on end pretending I was an orphaned English child being raised as a Hindu Indian Princess who would eventually be rescued from an imminent and horrible death-by-suttee by a dashing British soldier after the aged (and impotent) bridegroom that I had been forced to wed at the age of 13 died of a sudden heart attack after eating too many sweetmeats…
This is another one I blame on my parents. They're the ones who gave me the thousand-page novel The Far Pavilions to read when I was 9.
Currently, my fantasy selves tend to live in two rather divergent worlds. Down one path lies khaki pants, orphanages, and refugee camps in Africa. And down the other lies fresh pasta and an Italian restaurant in a small sugar cane farming town in Australia - a place where I could eventually get to know half the people in town, where making bread dough would substitute for hours on a computer, and where the saddest stories I'd hear would usually be on the evening news.
Don't get me wrong. I'm fully aware that by living in LA and working with a nonprofit I'm daily living out other's alternate-life fantasies. But that doesn't negate the fact that the basic economic principle of opportunity cost holds just as true in relation to the wealth of time as it does for money. By choosing this I am giving up a whole alternate set of experiences, relationships, and life lessons that would shape a different me. Robert Frost took the road less travelled and it made all the difference for him, but even if he'd choose it again without hesitating I'd wager he wondered about that other path occasionally.
As we spent four hours crawling up the freeway this afternoon Erica and I had plenty of time to wistfully contemplate other paths, paths free of millions of other cars. Roads way less travelled had rarely looked so good, and Erica circled back around to this topic.
"What keeps us doing what we're doing then? Because all three of us could live those alternate lives."
She's right. Leah could teach, Erica could consult, and I could own a restaurant. Those two, at least, would be very good at their alter-lives. So what keeps Leah scoring music, Erica separating cells, and me writing emails during weeks, or even months, when it's just not much fun? What has made us choose this path and stick to it for years?
What drives any of us to stick at something for years when it's not a constant carnival? For many, a need to pay the rent and eat, clearly. But that's not all. Few of us who live in the western world must do exactly what do what we do to feed and clothe ourselves. In most cases, our career choices are more influenced by a cocktail of duty, fear, apathy, talent, priorities, and passion. Alternate lives, at least one or two of them, often lie within reach.
There's a quote I think of frequently, "Live every moment as if you had chosen it." In addition to the fact that (on good days) I want to help people, in addition to really believing that the Headington Institute is working to meet a huge need, in addition to the travel and the adventure - this knowledge that I do have a choice, steadies me.
After all, I could move to Africa and work in an orphanage if I chose. I'd probably even be able to cajole some of my favorite people in the world into joining me. After my last essay one of my best friends Tash wrote me the following, "In the next two years I'm prepared to seriously consider moving somewhere crazy with you to help set up something useful."
I could also move to Ballina. I don't know whether I'd be able to talk my parents into helping me fund an Italian restaurant, but it's possible – especially if I ask Dad first while Mum's not around.
Of course, I could also stay in LA and make a fortune writing saucy advertising copy full-time for Victoria's Secret.
It's just good to know I have options. It helps me say… For better or for worse. For adventure or for email. For now.
I choose this.