Two stories, one true, the other a fable:
First --
Pierre Trudeau -- Canada's greatest, truest prime minister, a man I accidentally met along with Greg Gaspari and Eric Daigle while waiting for movie stars outside of the Sutton Hotel in Toronto back in the fall of '95, a man who signed my paperback copy of Paul Auster's screenplays for SMOKE andBLUE IN THE FACE before he slowly strolled up Bay Street, a small old man who no one gave a second look to -- used to go scuba diving in the Arctic. In his fifties.
(See why he was the greatest?)
After he died, one of Trudeau's companions on those nautical adventures, a long-time doctor friend of his, recalled the glee and the determination the prime minister brought to his dives. He used to sit on the edge of the boat, and smile at the doctor, and look at the wide Arctic sky looming over them, and ask: "How deep do you think we can go?"
Second --
Two guys, one young and one old, are sitting on the top deck of a luxury cruise liner as it slowly bobs it way through the Atlantic ocean. It's a beautiful evening -- cool air, red sun slowly sinking into the water, bikini-clad babes milling around the pool. Lit cigars. Lavender lounge chairs. Red wine. Soft music. The whole deal.
The young guy, taking a puff on his stogie, slowly lets the smoke escape from his lips.
"My first time on a boat," the guy says. "Can you believe that. First time. Just look at that water, man. Look at it!"
"Yeah," the old guy says, smiling, watching a college girl in a two-piece do her laps in the pool in a series of lazy, I-ain't-gotta-be-nowhere strokes. "And you know what?"
"What?" the young guy says, taking another puff.
"That's just the top," the old guy says, turning his gaze to the sea. "That's just the top, kid."
I'll come back to these points in a moment. Honest. Don't go anywhere.
See, the thing is, I've stepped foot in seven countries.
For the record: Canada (the true north strong and free), the U.S., Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia.
Three of them don't count. (Okay, okay -- they count as countries, yes, but they don't count for me. Why? Because I spent only two days in Hong Kong, one night in Malaysia, and
Thailand -- well, Bangkok has a heck of an airport. Got a KFC and everything.
I've spent a total of a month and a half, tops, in the States, and that's including over-the-border runs to Buffalo, New York, and vacations in Myrtle Beach and Orlando.
Japan? For four years the Japanese were my homeboys (and homegirls.)
Kampuchea? Seventeen months, and counting...
And what have I learned?
For me, it comes down to breadth and depth.
A former Canadian co-worker of mine here in Phnom Penh (who used to teach high school math at East York Collegiate in Toronto) has been to a hundred countries. A HUNDRED. That's a lot of stamps in a lot of passports.
I've been to seven.
But I lived in Canada for twenty-three years, and will again. (I'm assuming. Although Ice -
land is looking tempting. And El Salvador, well, it has its moments...)
Japan was my base for four years, and I feel a strong, almost electric pull to it.
And Cambodia is definitely surreal and intricate, but it's raw and real and compelling.
The thing is, I've spent time in these places. I've ate the food. I've listened to the music. I've watched their politicians talk and bargain, slowly realizing that they all the do the same
shuck-and-jive, no matter what the country; it's the beat that changes, is all.
Living in Canada, and Japan, and Cambodia, has given me depth. It hasn't made ME a deep person, no, but it's forced me to dip and then dive into the deep end of life. You have time to breathe and live and grow and think when you live a foreign country.
Passing through a country for a week or a month, you get breadth. You see a lot. You marvel a lot. But I don't think you get the chance to learn a lot. It's the difference between seeing five flashy movies and reading one good book, slowly, in sips, not gulps.
Not that you have to go to a foreign country to get depth. I think you can stay in the town that you grew up in for thirty, forty years, and, if you look around, and observe, and listen, and feel for the pulse and listen for the hum, you will get a depth deeper than you could ever have imagined.
I don't think one way's better than the other, breadth or depth, either-or, Freddy versus Jason, Alien versus Predator. Different strokes for different folks, as I like to say.
The import thing is, no matter where you are, or for how long you are there, to go deeper.
To dive in.
How deep do you think you can go?
