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February 27, 2008
London, Oxford, and Choices
Growing up, my mother always advocated for keeping my options open. Expand your choices, she assured me, and you will be grateful when the moment of decision is at hand. But while I have found her advice both wise and useful, at what point does maximizing your options conflict with maximizing your utility? What exactly defines that integral yet timeless moment of choice, that crucial crux of alteration along our weaves of life? What do our choices really mean, really signify? This past weekend, to create a break from my Polish life (sometimes we need a vacation from our vacation) I decided to take a trip to visit two of my oldest friends, Andrew and Jeff, in London. I went looking for a good time; I left with a brand new perspective on what this whole puzzle really means.
Few people under the age of 25 have known me longer than Andrew. I can still vividly remember the car ride conversation when my mother informed me of my upcoming “play-date” with a brand new friend, someone completely and entirely unknown. I was originally abrasive and stand-offish, as even at the age of 3 my ever expanding social circle was becoming a bit overwhelming. Could I really handle more?
As luck would have it, Andrew and I became fast friends. We began pre-kindergarten together the next year. The funny thing about Andrew and I is that our interests could not have been any different. Andrew was an outdoorsman, obsessed with fishing and nature and animals of all sorts, while I was a sports fanatic and video games connoisseur. Yet each of us would always find time to indulge the interests of the other, whether it was fishing trips for Andrew’s birthday or baseball games for mine.
While in our younger years we were inseparable (his mother even joked that we should purchase a small house together, albeit with two bathrooms), as the years went on our interests grew even farther apart. Andrew’s love of nature evolved into a love of New York nightlife, and by the age of 16 he was already making real money off of promoting parties in downtown Manhattan. I, meanwhile, developed an affinity for politics and history, remaining far more intimidated by the club scene. My below average height and poor dancing skills did little to assuage these fears. Yet throughout it all, Andrew and I remained very loyal to our bond, valuing the complimentary strengths we so clearly saw in the other. I would help Andrew with schoolwork; he would help me with girls. Our friendship seemed to rise above interests and enter some transcendent world of understanding and appreciation.
On the other hand, my relationship with Jeff has been very different. Jeff and I first became friends in Kindergarten, and our relationship really began to blossom when he moved down the block (suburbanly speaking) in the 4th grade. Jeff’s interests and mine matched up more closely, to some extent. I have vivid recollections of afternoons playing commandos and super Nintendo in my house or one-on-one basketball in the park. Memories of bike rides and mall/movie excursions, of tree houses and paintball imbue my memories.
As Jeff and I grew older, and as I watched him firsthand persevere through trials that will exceed the test of time, our interests remained ever similar while our ideologies and perspectives drifted to opposite ends of the spectrum. In a time where I was stuck in the intractability of adhering strictly to my parents’ political beliefs, Jeff was experimenting with genuine Lockean liberalism, straddling a libertarian outlook when he would try to convince me that we should abolish the public school system of which he was a product. (Authors Note: Jeff, if you are reading this, I would like to acknowledge that was an unfair dig that leaves you unable to respond. Feel free to berate me on my Facebook wall or with nasty letters to my future employers.)
Jeff eventually developed a plethora of interests that far surpassed my intellectual capacity at such a young age. He also developed a keen eye (and soul?) for traditional Judaism, and has obtained knowledge of the subject that far surpasses my own. He is one of the smartest people I know, and also one of the strangest. But as the two so often go hand in hand, I cannot help but admire what he has overcome, what he has accomplished, and the greatness he undoubtedly will do in the future.
So here the three of us were, growing up in a one square mile radius, with similar schooling, the same community, and parents who were friends. How exactly did we all end up so differently? Where the peas even really straying from the pod? Or were we just differing emulations of our parents, accentuating the qualities we chose to imitate and ignoring those we chose to forget? Did we have any control?
When Junior year came around, it is no surprise that all three of us chose to study abroad. But our choices could not have been any different. Andrew, ever hesitant of traveling, chose to go to London. The common language and city life suited his persona perfectly. Jeff had chosen to spend a year in Oxford, immersing himself in intensive studies at one of the foremost institutions of learning ever created. I, of course, chose Warsaw, because I have trouble operating inside the box. My trip would give me an insight into the study abroad experiences of others, of my friends.
I have to admit, in the midst of my arrogance I became convinced that everyone I knew was missing out by not coming to Warsaw. It truly felt and seemed like the greatest possible abroad destination. I assumed that Andrew and Jeff were enjoying themselves, but were they really experiencing the same sense of enlightenment that I was? I felt as if they were still stuck in some past age, still tredding water while I was slowly rising to the surface. But there was only one way to find out, so off I went.
I was supposed to meet Andrew at some London night-spot upon my arrival. Of course my superb luck with travel yielded me unable to use my cell phone to contact him, but with the directions in hand I still felt optimistic. I arrived at the club and suddenly realized that I had no way to get a message to Andrew, who was clearly inside. I approached the door hesitantly, my trepidation evident to all around me, when suddenly a woman approached me and asked if I needed something. I began to explain that I had just arrived and was supposed to meet my friend Andrew inside. To my shock, she asked “Oh! Are you Jeremy? From Poland?” This was probably the first and only time in my life that anyone working the door at a club would know who I was. I was escorted in with the royalest of treatments, and met Andrew downstairs, where he proceeded to shower me with whatever I desired. It was typical Andrew: he had left his job promoting clubs in New York only to develop an entirely more lucrative profession in London. Andrew was running the place, and I was with him.
Since it was my 4th visit to England, Andrew and I decided the next day to forego the touristy destinations and instead head straight for what it was I truly desired. The love of my life, the object of my affection, those two magical words that make my heart skip and my mouth melt: Kosher Meat. Oh, how I had missed thee, thou beefiest of kebabs! Oh, how thou had forsaken me, you most deliciously glazed chicken! If the Shakesperean language seems like a little much, then you are failing to grasp what it was like for me to live without any meat for an entire month. That night, Andrew and I went clubbing again. They treated him like he was a king. It was classic Andrew, the coolest guy in the room. I was amazed, I was awed, and I was extremely tired.
On Saturday, Andrew and I made the short but sweet sojourn up to Oxford, England. Jeff’s environment could not have been any different from Andrew’s. Oxford is a quiet town, and Jeff’s days aren’t spent in wild clubs and expensive bars but in libraries and small pubs. Jeff has truly attempted to ingratiate himself into this academic community, going so far as to criticize mine and Andrew’s dress because we looked too “American.” Jeff gave us a nice tour of Oxford, where we saw the World’s oldest library and Harry Potter’s dining room, ate some Fish and Chips where Tolkien and Lewis wrote their literary masterpieces, and watched an exciting and slightly violent Oxford crew race. After Andrew left, Jeff and I walked extensively around the small city, visiting some of the nooks and crevices I had frequented during my stay in Oxford four years prior.
Although I realized the superficial differences between Andrew and Jeff’s experiences, it was only when I began meeting many of Jeff’s friends later that day that the comparisons became ever more glaring. Andrew’s friends, and Andrew’s environment, revolved around having a good time, something at which they greatly excelled. Andrew and his friends awoke ever morning with a smile on their faces, content with a night well spent. What a beautiful thing, to truly reap that much enjoyment out of life.
While Jeff certainly enjoyed himself, there was a deeper mission at play. For Jeff and his friends, they were all, in some way, attempting to raise their level of intellectualism and rational thought, to reach the peak of the individual brain capacity and to become the truly enlightened individuals they all strove to pay. For them, it was not waking up but rather going to sleep satisfied. Is there anything more admirable, more rewarding than that of self-cultivation?
As I left Oxford the next morning, I was again struggling with these differences. How could such juxtaposed experiences both be so equally rewarding? Where did my experience fit in? Was I straddling some line in between these polarities, incapable of full enjoyment yet restrained from reaching life’s great epiphanies? Would I regret this middle ground, this inability to choose? Or was my choice an entirely different one? Was I aiming for some aspect of self-understanding through cultural understanding? Was my enjoyment and education simply too deeply intertwined?
Most importantly, could I exist in this middle ground? Or would I have to choose?
My last stop on my visit was a quick stopover to Hyde Park’s famed Speakers Corner. For those of you who have never been, I encourage you to make it a staple of your next trip overseas. Since the 19th century, men and women of varying political philosophies and orientation have come to the park on Sunday afternoons, holding political rallies and demonstrations. Often these speakers drift well outside the mainstream, and in a beautiful realization of a free society these outsiders are given a venue. Marx, Lenin, and Orwell all exercised their right to free speech in this small square footage of greenery.
Even today, most of the individuals at speakers corner drift outside normal societal bounds. During my visit, there was a man advocating Jews for Jesus, a Muslim from the Bronx, and an absolutely crazed woman predicting imminent doom for the scathingly immoral British people. All of these speakers were more divisive than informative, and it seems far easier to rile people’s emotions than to actually convince them that you are preaching the truth.
Once in a while, however, Speakers Corner can divulge a true gem. Amidst all the crowds of controversy was a man who was simply holding a sign that said “Everything is OK.” The man’s message was simple: who you are is who you are, and where you are is where you are meant to be. This message of self-control over one’s life, and this implication that what we do truly matters, was both ridiculous and fascinating, improbably and uplifting. While I did not buy into this man’s entire shtick, and while, to a certain extent, he probably enjoyed the sound of his own voice, he made me realize a valuable point. We are all defined by our choices.
Andrew chose to go to London because that is the experience from which he would derive the greatest benefit, the great utility, the great opportunity to expand his personal horizons within an environment where he would be comfortable. Ditto for Jeff, for whom Oxford was the opportunity for true intellectual stimulation and interaction with his peers who function on a similar plane, an experience that would be new and fun and always interesting. I lay somewhere in the middle, looking for enjoyment not from a nightclub but from a gathering of differences, looking for education not from a text book but from an experience. I would wake up in the morning with a smile from a night well spent, and I would go to sleep at night feeling smarter than the day before. I was partly Andrew, and I was partly Jeff, but most importantly, I was a product of my own choices. And so were they. And we were all just as happy for it.
That’s when I began to look at my mother’s advice in an entirely new way. Maximizing my choices meant maximizing my own possibilities, widening the breadth of who I am in order to widen the breadth of who I may become. Keep your options open, and let time and experience help you define who you are.
After fifteen minutes of preaching in this small corner of London, this champion of choices made a charge to his growing crowd. If you feel you must stay, then stay. But, he added, as a powerful caveat, if this is not where you need to be, then I encourage you to leave.
The bus to the airport was a short walk away. I had plenty of time, but why waste it here? I wanted to get back to where I needed to be, to my fun and my experience and to where my inclinations were leading. I wanted to get back to Warsaw. Because that was my choice.
Posted by borovitz at February 27, 2008 10:13 AM