For as long as I can remember...

I knew I belonged somewhere else. Maybe it was the first time I saw an issue of "National Geographic," learned about some tribe somewhere, realized there were other places to be, other ways to live. I just never felt quite right here, and I was always treated as if I were just a little bit odd (or strange, or weird. I prefer the term eccentric). As I grew older and understood more, the more I resented capitalism, First World Superiority, the culture of this McWorld. But then maybe that's just because I grew up lower-middle class. I instinctively felt that somewhere out there was a culture that had something better than materialism at its core, but then I grew up in a single parent family where my mom was all the family I had. Rarely satisfied with what was before me, I always dreamed of being somewhere else...And they say you can't run away from your problems...I have found over the years that the reverse is true. Once I was 15 I started moving, from Halifax to Germany, Portugal, Montreal, Toronto, and then at age 18, to Israel. That's a long story. Just the other day I was speaking to another former Israeli resident who said, "Israel is like the ex-husband you will always love but just can't live with."