Last week we had a family dinner with Carolyn’s brother, Fred, and his wife, Tamsen. It was casual. I made dessert, we ordered pizza, Tamsen made a salad, and Carolyn made cocktails. After dinner our hosts asked: what are the things you like most about living in France? What do you miss about the US when you are in France?
I absolutely miss the simplicity of life in Montpellier. Sure, there are complicated loopholes to jump through for travel visas, our pets, paying taxes, etc. But daily life is more relaxed and more social.
I also miss walking and the eye candy in the old city. There’s no shortage of interesting street life in Montpellier, old buildings, window shopping, street musicians, striking workers marching up Rue Foch, security patrols, dogs. Walking is part of daily life in Montpellier: I walk to the market for groceries (often several times a day), I walk to the coffee shop, the boulangerie, the park, the museum. By contrast, most things in Austin require driving. The grocery store, the gym, the doctor all pretty much require getting in a car, especially once summer is in full swing (it gets HOT here!) This morning I walked the dog for twenty minutes around our Austin neighborhood and didn’t encounter a single other person on foot. That would never happen in Montpellier.
Life in the US is more solitary, everyone is busy all the time. In France I have conversations with the barista when I order a drink—they come around the counter to pet Woody and give him a treat. I talk to the woman at the vegetable stand, the cashier at the hardware store, the cheese guy, the person next to me when I stop to listen to a busker. When I do laundry in France, I walk to our corner laundromat where I sit and play guitar and sing songs for an hour while the machines are running. I meet people every time, some stop to listen and we talk about music. One guy stopped to do sketches of me playing guitar. I ended up showing him my sketchbook and we talked for half an hour about drawing and watercolor.
Those kinds of street-level interactions are tough to come by here in Austin; the baristas are usually too busy to chat and employers frown on it, at the gym most people wear headphones which is isolating and removes the possibility of conversation. Frequently, I get home from the grocery store and realize I didn’t talk to anyone at all - or at most said “excuse me” to someone in a cramped aisle. It used to make me crazy (in France) when the grocer would have a short conversation with every person in line. The conversations sometimes continued for several minutes after the customer had paid and the vegetables were bagged up. Now I enjoy it. I have slowed down, I value the community bonds, and I like it when they ask about my travel plans, my dog, or what I’m making for dinner.
Lately, I’ve read a lot of statistics about loneliness in the US. Scott Galloway did an excellent post on it in his No Mercy/No Malice podcast. Loneliness is on the rise in America - we’ve designed our lives to be solitary and efficient. I think many of us are also scared of each other, hence the guns, gated communites, headphones, and ubiquitous cameras/security systems.
Our family dinner conversation made me ask myself: what are we running towards? Our Substack title implies that we are fleeing (escaping) something. Having now fallen in love with France, it feels like we are running towards something there rather than away from something in the US. Among the requirements to become a permanent resident in France, one must demonstrate:
Integration into French society (which you can do by joining social clubs and participating in community events)
Commitment to the principles of the French Republic.
There’s actually a contract you have to sign that spells out the principles in question:
Everything in the list is a value we once supported here in the US, but respect for those ideals is waning in the United States. We have tortured and distorted the ideas and we have lost sight of fraternity (community, a sense of shared purpose and values).
Yes, I’m running towards the language, pace of life, and beauty that we have found in France, but I’m also running towards the ideals of the French Republic including dignity, equality, personal freedom, and (importantly) fraternity.
Jusqu’à la prochaine fois (until next time),
Roberto & Carolyn
Your comments about daily interactions are spot on. The two photos prove it. As for places in the US where you can meet up with neighbors, I cannot recommend a single one. New York came closest for us because we lived in "the Village" which is all historic old brownstones with stoops that people sit on. But head up to Midtown or elsewhere and you find high-rises and lonely people. When you have to work really hard at making friends and you are not an extrovert, you could die of loneliness I think. That just does not seem to happen anywhere here. People do pay attention to other people, even if they are not close friends, and they take the time to chat.
I so appreciate the title of your post. Living well is very much about “running towards”, and the current political climate in the US seems very much about “anti-“ this and that.
It’s no way to live. It’s isolating, and I’m so tired of being afraid for my family and friends. My spouse AJ and I are also looking carefully at what we’re building, what we’re running towards.