The other day a new friend asked me why I had moved to Paris and your know what? I was stumped for an answer. The truth sounded so inane and shiftless. After all, before arriving here in 2006, I had been a well entrenched Southern Californian suburban mom married to an accountant (though one who was thankfully missing many typical accountant characteristics!). I was in the middle of raising 4 teenage/ young adult daughters. Picking up and running off to Paris certainly was not the next logical step.
But I found myself looking into the face of my new friend and trying to explain myself without sounding like a flake. You see, I am hoping that this woman will be instrumental in helping me begin my new career. She is the HR manager of a well known investment bank (one that has not gone under in the last week) and she may be the first to award me an executive coaching contract. I certainly don't want to seem flighty in front of her.
You came to Paris without a job? For no real reason other than you wanted to experience something really different? And you wanted to learn to speak French?
Wellllll......yes.
Instead of tsk-tsking me she then told me that I must be very brave. (Either that or very stupid). I don't feel brave. In fact, being here has seemed so natural, though not always easy, it feels right all the same, so I never think of myself as brave.
I have never been one who goes in for tons of agony before making a decision. If it feels right, if my stomach doesn't do sickening flips at the thought, then I just go and do it. That is how I took the last big step across the Atlantic. I think that I read one too many of those romantic sounding ex-pat books and decided that it was time to live out my fantasy. And really, why not? I didn't want only "other people" to have all the fun after all. For some reason I also needed to struggle through the challenges of living in a foreign country and I have discovered that nothing opens your eyes like seeing the world through the eyes of another culture. And how that culture sees you.
There is only one thing that I can say for sure and that is that if you are contemplating ever to doing a crazy risky thing, you might as well just do it. Don't wait too long. It certainly makes life interesting.
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