Robin Cangie

One of the things I miss most about the Pacific Northwest is the fall. Fall in Portland is vibrant, showy, inescapable, and oh, how I loved it. Fall in Berkeley is far more subtle.

You won’t find it on every street. The trees bear their autumn colors with far less pride and flamboyance.

You find it, instead, in the smallest details. And so lately, I have been trying to pay attention.

To the way that light and shadow play on a November day.

To a single bright flower.

Or a few vibrant leaves.

And I found that as I began to notice these lovely little details, they began to make themselves more apparent to me, until all the world seemed to burst with detail, finely etched and vibrant.

It is a very different kind of beauty than the opulent trees of my hometown. But this kind of beauty is, I think, no less powerful, and perhaps in some ways, even more so, than the kind of beauty that can’t be overlooked or ignored.

For these small, precious things require a second glance, a double take, a bit of extra attention in order to be truly seen. And like all small, precious things, they are worth the effort.

Today is my one-year anniversary of the great move to California.

Technically it’s been a little longer for me (I spent my first six weeks in the Bay Area living in a teepee that I found on Airbnb), but one year ago today, my husband and I loaded all our possessions into a moving truck and drove from Portland, Oregon, to the San Francisco Bay Area.

A lot can happen in a year.

My post-move feelings ran the gamut from disorientation to culture shock to gnawing doubt, and then, at last, to new friends, happy hours, favorite restaurants, and a long-awaited sense of home.

This country is big. Before I moved, I had no real concept of just how big, of just how many different people, cultures, and subcultures inhabit this vast space we call the United States of America. I’d traveled to various states and noted their differences, even spent a year abroad, but I was woefully unprepared for how hard it would be to move a mere one state south.

It’s a shame, because people move all the time in this country, and no one talks about how hard it is. When people ask me how I like California so far, the stock answer is supposed to be, “It’s great!” A light-hearted comment on the differences between Oregon and California will also suffice, but an honest answer about loneliness and homesickness in a new place is met with surprise and awkwardness.

And so we get the sense that moving should be easy, and if it isn’t, then we are simply weak.

We convince ourselves that technology will ease the pain of leaving friends and family, that homesickness has an expiration date of weeks, or a few months at most.

Maybe our collective silence on the subject of intranational culture shock has something to do with rugged American individualism, as if it were a sign of weakness, or worse, an abdication of personal responsibility, to admit our dependence on culture, context, and people.

Our national narrative of self-reliance doesn’t leave much room for the nuances of human interdependence, and my unexpected culture shock is a very minor casualty of that narrative. But it was an eye-opener for me, even as someone who long ago abandoned the idea that sheer will and a bootstrap mentality are the only requisites for happiness and success (loaded terms all).

We would do well to introduce some humanity into this narrative, some thoughtful context to temper the ideal of the Great Individual, dependent on nothing and no one.

Especially here, in this supposed hub of human and technological innovation, and especially in an election year, we could use some honest discussion about the many ways in which we are reliant not only upon ourselves, but also upon the many cultural, institutional, and interpersonal forces that surround us, shape us, and are shaped by us.

Indeed, we always have been, and maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe it can even be a wonderful thing. But first, we must learn to accept our intertwined destinies and speak openly about the challenges and opportunities we must face together, whether they relate to the broken healthcare system, the melting Arctic ice sheet, or, on a personal note, the very real difficulties of moving to another state.

As far back as I can remember, I have known that I wanted to do meaningful work, which for me has always involved both writing and making the world a better place.

My desires were often downplayed by well-meaning people who encouraged me to abandon my hopes of a meaningful career in favor of something more practical (can’t you at least minor in business?), as though the idea of work that was both personally fulfilling and made a difference in the world was a pipe dream, or worse, a luxury reserved only for the tremendously wealthy or the tremendously lucky.

This is a very impoverished way of thinking about work. Of course we can’t all have careers as poets, painters, and travel writers, but it’s a shame that in a time when we are so collectively hungry for work that feeds our souls (nearly three out of four American workers are disengaged from their jobs, a trend that is also present worldwide), we continue to dismiss the notion that meaningful work should be possible and desirable for most people.

Perhaps this is because we don’t fully understand what it means to do meaningful work. For those of us whose primary source of income is seemingly unrelated to the pursuits we’re most passionate about, how can work possibly be meaningful and enjoyable, much less make a difference in the lives of other people? This is an idea I’d like to explore in much more detail in another post. (Spoiler alert: I think the idea of “following your passion” usually does more harm than good.)

In the meantime, Mike Rowe, host of Dirty Jobs, has some wonderful insights into what makes work meaningful. Watch his TED talk and if the mood strikes you, I’d love to hear your ideas on meaningful work in the comments.

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