Get Away from Here as Far as Possible

“Take me to the farthest edge of this earth
Take me to lands without tears
I only think that this misery
In the sunlight will hurt me less”

Charles Aznavour “Emmenez-moi”
Translation by G. Hanaf

… as far away as possible

Slam the door, turn off the light, and do not look back. Leave behind the potholes in the roads, high taxes, the lack of opportunities for a good job, hopelessness and boring weekends. Leave behind wandering around on Sunday afternoons between a family lunch and a visit to the supermarket. Flee from a tiny, run-down, hopeless town where stagnation and cliques rule and someone else pulls the strings, where nothing will ever change. As in the song, board a ship sailing to the promised land, where the sun is always shining.

… but where?

Two months ago in Greece, young people who had graduated from university took to the streets to protest against the lack of career prospects. University degrees do not protect against unemployment, and few of the protesting graduates are satisfied with working as waiters. The same situation already threatens Italy and Spain. Politicians have failed; they have no idea how to develop the country and ensure prosperity for its citizens. Young Italians live with their parents because more than half of them cannot find work in their profession within a year of graduating. Corruption, nepotism, the mafia. In Spain, unemployment among people under thirty reaches 17 percent. Ambitions have been awakened, and hopes have gone unrealized.

In the age of globalization, we are a small village, and places to escape to are shrinking and becoming fewer, like everything around us. The Internet allows us to communicate with every place on Earth and read all the news. There is no country without problems. And they are so similar that it is difficult to distinguish countries from one another on their basis.

Where is life better? Everywhere we are not. Yet once we go somewhere, our perspective changes. Tourists most often ask about earnings. Then they quickly convert them into zlotys and conclude that the average salary, for example in France, is about 4,000 zlotys. That is when they start complaining about Poland. This lasts until their first visit to a restaurant and a shop. “Why is everything so expensive here?” they ask. And when they learn the price of rent and utilities, also in euros, they stop envying the French.

And yet we all know that things are bad here, and that a world full of prospects is just around the corner; someone only needs to take us away from here.

… but with whom?

Who should we escape into the world with? It is better to remember that on every journey, even the shortest one, we primarily travel in our own company. In the introduction to his book “Francuska ścieżka,” Waldemar Łysiak wrote something worth considering before any journey. I will quote it: The path should be programmed into a person before they begin their journey; if it is not, the journey will be barren. (…) if you seek emotion (…) through love—you will encounter beautiful women; through painting—you will fall in love with the smile of the “Gioconda.” Columbus, sailing west, carried all of America within him.

What will a malcontent and a person disappointed with themselves and their life find in the world? If they like nothing here, will they like everything somewhere better over there?

Problems with earning large sums of money, buying an apartment without loans lasting for years, the lack of an easy start in life, finding work after university and attractive entertainment are too serious to be avoided by running away. Especially an escape based on denying everything and everyone, which merely excuses human passivity and lulls the desire to act.

In my work, I met young people from small villages and shared the opinion that they are more active than those from the city. Despite commuting to school and having greater responsibilities at home, they more often signed up for extracurricular activities and showed more passion in what they did. They probably wanted to move to a big city in the future, but they had a goal and worked toward achieving it.

There is a major difference between escaping from one’s unsuccessful life, for which we blame the place where cruel and unchangeable fate has put us, and traveling with a specific goal, conscious of our own strength and ability to make changes. Then, each time we return from a distant journey, small towns once again become charming places—not as frightening as the devil of passivity makes them seem.

Grażyna Hanaf