The art of the trade

My linguist friend and his linguist wife joined me for dinner tonight.  We are friends from way back.  I loved the comfort of the conversation, the ease of their manner, and the topics of conversation.  They have been doing work in Nigeria for the past two years and have come to the states for a couple of months each summer.  I love to hear of their work because it involves great stories of the Nigerian language.  Tonight we talked of their work in reducing an only spoken language to writing, and their work of teaching translation principles to the Nigerian students.

Also in our conversations, they speak of their living conditions.  I am always aware of what they have given up to be in Nigeria.  They are part of the educated elite, so they could live anywhere, or they could have stayed in the states.  They have traded their need for comfort and familiarity for enjoyment of their talents applied to their mission in life.

If there's one thing about life that I have learned, it is that life is a series of trade-offs.  I am usually satisfied with most things in life.  Another way of saying that is that most of the time, I can live with what I have traded off to be in the position I find myself.  But, as I think of trade-offs tonight, I am very dissatisfied that Life has required my heart of me even though it has left me with external trappings of beauty. My best effort at navigating has not yielded the result I wanted.  It has been a brutally harsh exchange this time.  My friends have been content to live near Jos and Lagos rather than the States, but it has been the deep end of the ocean for me.  I have faith that one day I will surface from the deep with my heart again in its place... that true contentment will return once again.