I've been asked at least 100 times why I moved to the Netherlands. I have a portfolio of stock answers. I have a long and varied version which consists mostly of all the reason why I prefer the lifestyle here. I can weave a pretty good tale stringing selected anecdotes together ("I took my first step out of Centraal Station in Amsterdam and just knew I had to live there..."). I've got the nutshell version which is useful in elevators. And finally, there's the brush-off version: "This is a story best told later over a glass of wine."
The newest version I'm telling now for the first time. I think I moved here in large part because it was a necessary step in realizing my vision for revolutionizing charitable giving (more on that coming soon). It's a fatalistic perspective, and that makes me uncomfortable. The Dutch take care of their own. They are repulsed by ostentation. But they complain about high taxes. They complain about people draining or taking advantage of the immense social services. They complain that people receiving welfare or unemployment benefits have a higher income than many civil servants. I argue that these are noble and honorable problems to have, but my Dutch friends remain unconvinced.
I try to describe to them a what life would be like if they abandoned the more socialist aspects of their society. I tried to explain to them what it is like to live in one of the most beautiful, wealthy cities in the United States that boasts the highest population of college graduates, where you must step over or around homeless people asleep or passed out lying on flattened cardboard boxes on your way to work. I try to describe to them how shocking and frightening it is the first time you're asked for money by a wild-eyed junkie on the verge of tweaking--and how shameful it is when after a few years, you are so used to homeless, drunk, and addicted people living on sidewalks, underpasses, and urban parks, you don't even notice them.
The first year I lived in Seattle, I saw a guy nodding out under a tree with a needle sticking out of his neck. The last time I was in Brussels, I saw a man lying on the pavement. His white beard was matted. He was filthy. His fingernails were long and blackened from God-knows-what (actually, even God probably doesn't want to think about it). He had no shoes, and was wearing only a torn t-shirt and sweatpants that were sliding off his body as he dragged himself, reaching futilely for a cup of water. His hand was trembling so severely from DT's he was close to registering on the Richter scale. He put on this display in the middle of a busy shopping street. Everyone walked around him averting their eyes.
In Paris, women in traditional peasant clothing or burqas beg for money on the streets, sitting on the sidewalks, silently, sometimes in a fetal position, or with a baby or a puppy in their arms and a styrofoam cup at their feet.
I have never seen any of this in Amsterdam. The most shocking thing that happens to me in this city is when I walk into the pharmacy every month, am handed my two prescription medications, and am not asked to pay for them. It feels like stealing, and after four years of living here, I still can't get used to it. The second most shocking thing is what utterly unskilled dancers much of the population is, and how they dance still with fervor and joy. There is no paper bag in the world a Dutchie can't dance his way out of.
