What I Want is a Sense of Community
My partner Marcia and I have a dream that I am sure many people have: to live near a beach in a tropical country, work from our laptops, and live happily ever after eating pineapple and not shovelling snow again.
This is a common dream that a lot of us have, right? To get out of the rat race and head down south? However, as I dig deeper and plan further and research more, I have found that a) moving is not as easy as it sounds on the internet; and b) there are a ton of other factors to think about before moving.
One of those factors that I didn’t initially think about but am now convinced might be the swing vote on whether we sink or swim in our new country is community.
It’s not the beach or the cheap food or the weather that will allow us to have a wonderful and long-lasting life in our new home, it’s a community and a sense of belonging.
I know, I was as surprised as you to realize that I’m a grown-up now. Who would’ve thought?
Marcia and I are well on our way to moving to a new country comfortably. I say ‘comfortably’ because anyone can decide to pack up and go, trying to figure out their journey along the way. I have done this before, and while it is fun and feeds the adventurous spirit, it is not ideal for long-term success. After a while, you get sick of living paycheque to paycheque, and then when your savings run out, it’s back to Canada to start over.
In ‘Move to a New Country Version 2.0’, we will already have online jobs, money saved, and a plan for the future when we buy our one-way tickets.
A big part of our plan is the place we end up. While we still have to do some travelling to scope out different countries that might fit our bill, Panama is the front runner right now. One of the reasons it is in the lead comes down to one word: community.
Marcia brought up the community idea a while ago when we talked about our plans to travel and move. I had never really thought about it before, but she made an excellent point. I thought about that conversation more and more, and I realized a sense of community is what I wanted as well!
My sister Katie and her partner Scot have lived in Panama for 12 years in a small town called Torio. A couple of supermarkets, a hardware store, a police station, and my sister’s little cafe — Katie’s Cocina — is the majority of Torio. While there might not be much opportunity for riches, anyone who has lived in a small town knows money isn’t that important as long as you have community and family.
I have lived in big cities my whole life. I have been trying and failing to keep up with the Jones’s. Some people have the drive and work ethic to make it to the top in the big city, and that’s great. For others, they get swallowed whole by the pace and financial obligation. As with most areas of my life, I fall somewhere in between.
I do love the big city, though. There is always something to do and somewhere to go. Not so much now during Covid, but you know what I mean. I am used to going to Walmart at any time of the day and getting whatever my little heart desires and then buying whatever else I (don’t) need two days later from Amazon.
There is no Amazon in Torio. However, the way Amazon is growing, there is a good chance they will have drones dropping off my Calgary Flames mug by the time we get to Torio. However, until then, a change of pace might be precisely what Marcia and I need. This world is moving much faster now than any other time in our lives, and there is no indication that it will ever slow down. Quite the opposite, I would say.
Take housing prices, for example. We live in New Westminster, which is in the Greater Vancouver Area. Like everywhere else in the world right now, real estate prices are skyrocketing. In January, there were 7,169 homes sold, according to MortgageBrokerNews.ca, which is a staggering 63.3% increase from last year, and the average listing price went up 16.1% to settle at… wait for it… $845,169!
Now, Marcia and I have both been working full time with a side gig for a while, and I can tell you that there is very little chance that we will be able to afford a mortgage here in Vancouver anytime in the near (or probably far) future. The numbers won’t add up. Maybe a condo in the $400,000 range, but in a couple of years, that number is now $500,000. For someone like me who already has one foot out of the country, unaffordable and skyrocketing home prices are just another confirmation that I need to be elsewhere.
We haven’t ruled out the possibility of starting a family one day, but there is no chance that we can have a good family life here in Vancouver. We don’t make enough money to make the numbers work on paper. Some people make having a family a priority, and they want to have kids no matter what. We are not those people.
People are different and have different priorities. Some people want to grind away at two jobs to (try to) retire early. Some people are happy working until their 65th birthday and then collecting the pensions they have been paying for 45 years. Both of those scenarios are fine. Everything is fine, really, as long as you know what you want. But again, I am somewhere in the middle. And that is fine too.
I know I am not destined for the top of the North American socio-economic food chain, nor do I strive for it. I want something in between. I want to be making good North American dollars in a lovely little beachside town where everybody knows everybody else.
As I said, Marcia came up with this notion of community, and it struck me hard right then and there. I wanted to be in a place where I felt at home and where I knew people, and where we did favours for each other and helped each other out and had dinners at each other’s houses. I have been a loner and a traveller for most of my life, but I think it is time for me to settle in somewhere with Marcia and put a few nails in the walls. Maybe get a dog or another cat or both.
When I was younger, and up until recently, I dreamt of just going travelling and never looking back. I wanted to hit the road and see everything there was to see and do everything there was to do because life is short, and you only get one. Now that I am a bit older and wiser, I can see that while a bohemian lifestyle might be fun for a while, I want a place of my own to hang my hat. Near a beach. Where it’s warm.
Society depends on proximity. We need to see other people living and interacting in a community to remind us that we have responsibilities to live where we live. We need to be reminded that we can’t just do whatever we want. In my early years, I wanted to do what I wanted and do it without consequence or sacrifice for the greater good. That way of life and way of thinking got me into addiction. I do not want to repeat the same mistakes when we can travel again, especially when we are ready to move again.
Our actions have consequences. We need to be responsible to a community to provide a service for the people where we live, even if that is only paying taxes, especially in a more impoverished country like Panama where they need that money from foreigners like us.
Why can’t I have the best of both worlds? It is the quest for every digital nomad: making American money while living in a cheaper sunny locale. Wouldn’t it also be great to have a community to come back from travelling to where friends and family are waiting?
“Choosing where you want to live is about deciding where you want to be happy. Otherwise, we are just staying alive, not living.” — From ‘Magical Andes’ on Netflix.
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