False Nostalgia: On Getting by in Washington, D.C.
There’s a point in every D.C. residents life where the combination of city living, constant traffic, ridiculous housing prices and transient community forces him or her to indulge in remembering ‘home.’
I won’t lie to you, Washington, D.C. is a trying place. If you’re lucky enough to make a great friend or find solid community, chances are those folks will be gone within three years. If by some chance, they remain in the D.C. metro area, they will still be at the whim of the forces of life such as children, job, marriage etc. Friendships that are geographically centered in D.C. and last more than 5 years are rare and incredibly valuable.
The second irritant is the daily grind. Whether you drive through some of the worst traffic in the country day in and day out or sit/stand in a Metro car that has you crammed in with strangers of varying hygiene levels like cattle, simply getting to work can be the times that try men’s souls. Couple that with a work culture that inherently values ‘office time’, burn-out comes as no surprise.
The cost of the city is no joke. Of course, New York City and parts of Los Angeles are vastly more expensive, but beyond that, D.C. is right there with housing costs. One bedroom apartments on Capitol Hill can easily run up to $2,000 a month. Even $100,000, which is plenty of money, doesn’t go nearly as far as you think it would. And certainly when compared to the places many of us call home, whether it’s a suburb in California, Colorado or Connecticut, it seems like a raw deal.
In one sense, that intense longing for home is based on a myth. For me, home is New Jersey. I still (perhaps mysteriously to many of you) love that state. I know it. I grew up there. I know where to go to see beautiful scenery (yes, it exists) I know how long it takes to get to Atlantic City, Manhattan or Philly from Mercer County. There’s a sense of peace that comes from being in familiar surroundings.
But the idea that somehow the drudgery of life is avoidable at home is a distortion of memory. There’s plenty to dislike about where I, or anyone, grew up. Yes, things are familiar, but what about all those frustrations my memory has buried? The slow and steady pace, the complete expectancy of each day or the lack of a really good restaurant? In truth, that predictable rhythm is one of the very things I romanticize now because D.C. lacks such simplicity, but as is often the case, the grass is always greener.
Beyond that, while people don’t constantly move, in my experience, the relationships I developed and that I saw folks around me develop, never went very deep. It’s very easy to retreat into one’s 3-story house and 2 acre lot. You aren’t forced into close proximity with a bunch of different people all the time. That’s not to say deep relationships don’t happen in the suburbs, they of course do, but there’s an advantage to the forced proximity of a city.
The truth is that longing for home isn’t for the house I grew up in. C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity
“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
The longing to go home, that so many people feel, is for our true home. This world is temporary and finite. At some level, we all know this. You don’t have to be a Christian to know that we’re all going to die. For Christians, there’s relief in being shown that our home is with God through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for us. We know we’re strangers in a strange land.
But why stay in D.C? I’ve been here 8 years, which is an eternity in DC years. I could try to make an argument for how it has been good for my career or that my network is there, but none of those things is really convincing. The truth is, what holds me here, is the local church. And it’s a view of the local church seen through the lens of eternity, of knowing where my true home is. God has provided a community for me through Redemption Hill Church, but more than that, he’s called me to serve in this place, at this time, at that church. Acts 17:26 says the Lord “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.” Meaning simply, God has placed me here by his will. Let’s do this thing.
It’s only through this lens, an eternal lens, that staying makes any sense to me. But if what I believe is true and the eternity with God awaits, these 5,10, 20 years will barely register in 30,000 years, why not try to do something that lasts?
And that’s what gets me through traffic, prices, work, rude tourists and annoying political operatives.