Thoughts about living abroad

A very important part of me wants to exert every effort to make a difference in the world, which I often imagine to entail being places, seeing and doing things that other people might not be willing to do.

But there are also times when in a more personal vein I imagine what will inevitably come to pass—my parents growing into old age, my grandparents ebbing in their twilight years and someday leaving us, my siblings becoming adults, dear friends getting married, having children—and I wonder how I could tolerate not being there for it all, what portion of inner humanity I might be sacrificing if I absent myself from the ordinary events of lives in procession intertwined.