On my trip through Europe last year I spent about two of my four weeks in Bordeaux. I hadn't planned on that, necessarily, but as I didn't really have any particular schedule heading into the trip I can only say I spent longer than I had originally anticipated.
I loved Bordeaux. The food, the wine, the people, the culture. I met a wonderful young French woman who took me to see a British indie rock band in what felt like a long-forgotten wine cellar or bomb shelter. With one euro beers to boot - I'm always happy with one euro beers. After the show we ate with the band and talked global politics, then went back to her place and she showed me the spectacular view from her 6th floor window.
Bordeaux spoke to the part of my soul that longs for the simple life. That would like nothing more than to buy a dairy near a well traveled road and sell ice cream and cheese to passing tourists. I fell in love with the smell of the room where they store the wine as it ages in oak barrels, the ancient feeling of the well worn wooded walls of tasting rooms, and the roses at the start of every vine - a wine maker's canary in a coal mine because rose bushes succumb to the same diseases as grape vines, but more quickly.
I thought how wonderful to settle down near Saint Emilion and leave the frantic pace of modern life to begin a relationship with the dirt, the sun, the rain, and the life of grapes, yeast, bugs, and the French - though I've had many bad experiences with Parisians.
As the days went on, as I took the half-day wine class offered by the Office de Tourisme de Bordeaux, as I read Gates of Fire, I started wondering whether that life would really, after all, make me happy.
Which part of my soul longs to run a vineyard, and can that part coexist with the part that requires me to give back? I deeply feel that to those whom much is given much is expected - what the French call "noblesse oblige." Should I decide to run a vineyard and one day succeed in making the greatest wine ever tasted by man... what's the benefit? Not to me, but to the world. What difference would that make 500 years down the road? Or as the Iroquois would say, what's the impact on the seventh generation?
Not much.
But can I be truly happy working to make the the world a better place? Or will I have to make my contribution first and then retire to a vineyard in order to find happiness? What if I never succeed? What if I never feel I've done enough to earn my peace? To repay the gifts God and my parents and this country have given me?
What then? Should I just find a way to buy a vineyard next week and let other people worry about Justice, Truth, and moving the world towards a better place for all of us? As long as I can make my wine or sell my ice cream, marry my wife and raise my kids as I see fit, why should I worry about my neighbors and their ability to do the same? And, finally, is raising our children the way we want and living our lives free from interference really what it all comes down to? Is that life?
What if the hokey pokey really is what it's all about?
The real question is, what can I live with - what do I require of myself? And I know I can't just make wine, no matter how good. I can't just hope that world will become a better place. I have to do something to make it better. What is a life worth that doesn't help others? What's the impact if I leave no impact? The simple fact I have life at all obligates me to use that life in a way that makes the world a better place for those with whom I share it.
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country - right? I know I have a heavier dose of that than most, and in no way do I look down on good people who do the right thing without dedicating their life to changing the entire world. They make a positive difference in the community they live in, whatever its size. In some ways I envy them that - but I simply can't be content with running a vineyard when so much injustice exists in the world.
Everyone wants to be part of something larger, to give part of themselves to a cause that moves the world in a positive direction - but I feel compelled to give all of myself. To give everything I have and everything I can give. My first obligation is and always has been to my family and friends, and will no doubt extend to my wife and children when I have them, but after that...
All of this is a long way of saying I don't plan on buying a vineyard anytime soon - or at least making oenology my primary focus. Wish I could, I really wish I could, I just can't.
Oh well, too bad - I bet I could make some damn good wine.
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