From the Book of Questions... Would You?

I have been seeing a lot of tag-type games going on in different blogging communities, such as this exercise or this one. I decided I would start up a game like that too and use it on various blogs that I keep. It should be a fun way to keep the blogs interesting, and to keep conversations rolling between different sites.

What I am doing is taking questions from Gregory Stock’s The Book of Questions (1985) and posting my answers to those question. I’ll then tag a few other bloggers to post their answers, with a link back to my original post. They will then tag a few other bloggers to asnwer the question, include links back, and so on.

I’ll start with this question:

For a person you loved deeply, would you be willing to move to a distant country knowing there would be little chance of seeing your friends or family again?

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My answer:

My first instinct is to say “no way.” I have friends who have married people from overseas and followed them to other countries, leaving behind their familiar, comfortable life and starting over again. I don’t think I would do this for a few reasons. The biggest is that I think it puts a whole lot of pressure on “a person you loved deeply.” That is a big expectation, for one person to be able to fill up all the holes that would be left in leaving one’s own family and friends. It seems to me to set up a strain on the relationship from the outset. So, while I would be more than willing to move to a distant country for many reasons, doing so for the sake of one well-loved person, well... perhaps not.

That said, it has struck me that I have pretty much done this already, very early on in life. When I was 21 years old, I felt called/compelled to leave my home and family (and friends) to start a new life on the other side of the globe. When I did this, email wasn’t something we had access to (I’d never heard of it then), and travel and phone calls were both expensive. I didn’t know when I’d next make a trip back to my hometown. The day I got on the plane and made that journey is probably the time in my life when I have wept most.

The thing that compelled me to do all of this was the church work that I do... or more precisely, I felt compelled to go and tell a story about someone I love in a place where the story is not very widely known. So, on second thought, perhaps I would be willing to move to the other side of the world for the sake of one person I love dearly and deeply.

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Here's a list of bloggers I'd like to see answer this question, and then let them tag 3 more to add on to the list:

Elizabeth Grace
Sien
ValkrieANGEL

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