22 August 2011

Different kinds of good

Shortly after moving here, Matthijs said that it was good to have moved to Amsterdam. And much to my surprise, I wasn't sure if I agreed with him. It wasn't at all that I thought that moving to Amsterdam was a bad idea - it was simply that living together in Den Haag was also good. And how could I say Amsterdam was good without making Den Haag sound like it was bad?

Not that life in Den Haag was always easy. And if I had to do it again, I think I still would have preferred Matthijs and I to be together in Amsterdam already last fall. I'd love to have done away with the stress of travelling and the tension and uncertainty that came with having our lives torn between Den Haag and Asmterdam.

And yet, it was good together in Den Haag. It was wonderful to delight in each other - having so much free time to do things together like cooking and playing games and simply being together. And it was good to work together through some of tension and the conflicts of loyalties that life in community can bring with it. And it was good for me to have some time to sort through again who I was and what I hoped to do and achieve. It was good to make a house together - to shape Matthijs's apartment into our house - and good to get to spend extra time getting to know Matthijs's friends and family better.

It was a longing for more (and the hope for new chances) that brings us to Amsterdam. And having made the choice together made it good. But what also made it good was that we weren't leaving a bad life somewhere else - we'd chosen to leave our good life in Den Haag in the hopes of something better - and with the trust that the 'goodness' that we'd built up in Den Haag would continue to grow with us.

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