(28/06/22)
There came a time when the sun was sticky on my skin during my endless free days and I read about the Nomads - the ones whose lifestyle I was always so attracted to, the ones I wanted to be a part of. Ever since I can remember, even as a child I liked to watch documentaries and shows about travel, other countries and cultures and wanted to escape to the world, see all of it. And while I couldn't and was locked in my room, I traveled through books not only to other countries, but also to other worlds.
But the nomad life has many obstacles. I still remember watching Into the Wild late at night, thinking about it until the morning and feeling strange because it suddenly offered me a much less idealized view of this lifestyle. Not only the insecurity of it, but especially the loneliness. And despite the fact that I haven't traveled that much yet, I've lived in another country and called it home and felt what it was like to leave behind pieces of myself in other places, to change homes and feel like I had more than one... but at the same time none fully. And it wasn't always a pleasant feeling.
I originally thought that this reportage would be something in that style. But then the book interested me even more, because it focused on nomad life not only in a different way, but also in a slightly different situation than a young person with a backpack on their back, who voluntarily chose this journey. And so I started with the exact opposite - thousands of retired people in vans, who, although they maintain optimism and a positive view of things, enjoy community and freedom, but gradually also reveal the stories that led them to this life. Stories of debts and loans, collapsed economy, unfortunate fates and a system that cannot take care of its citizens even if they follow all its rules to deserve it.
It was fascinating, disturbing, sad, joyous, hopeful and desperate. I learned a lot of new information and became convinced that America, with her inability not only to provide a person who has worked all his life with a pension or roof over his head, but also with the shootings at schools, loans for studies and health care, and most recently taking away the rights of women, is far away from the dream it claimed to be. It was a sad picture of the land and a sad look on nomad life, which ideally should be a choice rather than a necessity.
And yet… so hopeful. Reading about people who are sixty and over and can completely change their lives, take care of themselves, work and create a community, new friendships and relationships, and all this on their old knees, gives a person a kind of hope that it really is possible to change your life and try things at any age. But just as well, behind that hope and positivity and their own optimism, there are all those negative facts - about their country, about their system, about how people who deserve a break work harder than my young bones could handle and sleep alone in vans and on the road, resigned to the fact that if something happened to them, they might not be found for months.
It was a bittersweet read and captured the essence of life in the fates of those old moving bones. About how cruel and unfair and bleak it can be and at the same time about how people can stand up to it, create their own little space even on wheels, always reinvent and adapt, create new friendships and smile at the rising sun with a warm mug of coffee, wherever they are.
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