Eric and I decided to take a day trip up to the ‘country’; we went to visit a little town in Northern Connecticut where a famous Manhattan architect, Philip Johnson, had built his getaway home, The Glass House. The home, as the name suggested, was a midcentury style glass box,  surrounded by other architectural marvels, nestled in lush woods. The place was stunning — a home, and a setting, on which fantasies are built.

We joined a tour to learn a bit more about the architect and the history of the home. The docent explained that Johnson would spend 3 days a week at The Glass House and then return to Manhattan for the other 4 days to live in his NY apartment and work. When visitors to The Glass House asked about how he could ever want to leave, he explained he was always ready to go back to NY because the boredom of the country was too much by day 3, and always ready to head to the country because the stress of NY was too much by day 4.

On the face of it, it seemed like this architect had the prefect arrangement, he had managed to build himself a perfect life. In my own plans, I was working toward a similar arrangement: Eric and I want to retire with a country home and a city home, we want to split our time between two places that stimulate us in different ways. This is what drives us, it is the reason we endure Eric’s abusive jobs, why we scrimp and save and endure living arrangements and cities we hate.

The more I thought about it though, the more troubled I was by Johnson’s reply: If the country home had been satisfying why did he feel compelled to rush off to the city just days after getting there? If the city were satisfying why was he eager to escape to the country in another few days time? This wasn’t the perfect life, it was a life filled with longing, with restlessness and boredom — a life that wherever you are, somewhere else soon seems better. Is this really a life I want to emulate?

In my imagination, if I just have 2 homes I can travel between them and find fulfillment.  But the fact I always want more, to seek out new places, to have second homes, to move and travel, is a pretty big hint —  what the pattern tells me is I’m not satisfied. None of the many particular living arrangements I  have had to date, (one of which actually included 3 homes) has managed to satisfy me, so why would they start to be satisfying at some future fantasy date?