Dr. Bruce,
It all boils down to our kids, doesn’t it? In the end, all parents everywhere want the best for their kids. When this “wanting for the kids” is developed solely from a single minded, often western point of view, we, who are lucky enough to have escaped those shackles of confined thinking to do what you, me, and many others have done, are doing now, and will continue to do long after we are gone…we still suffer from second thoughts. Hell, we could enroll them into Harvard and still have “second thoughts.”
As parents, we are doomed to the constant inner struggle between doing for our kids what we feel so deeply in our gut and heart to what convention says we should do for them.
I already did the “conventional” way, and it didn’t work. In the US, most family courts have adopted divorce by “irreconcilable differences.” Those differences do not have to be defined. The end result for the last 15 or so years has been the breakdown of the family structure within America.
Here, at least for me, I have total comfort and enjoy every pleasure there can possibly be just being “dad.” In that atmosphere, I feel confident that my and Eri’s decisions that we make now and will in the long run, benefit our children greatly. My mom understood this, and embraced it with all her heart and soul. My only sibling, an older sister, still simply refers to my children in Bali as “half-breeds.” That doesn’t hurt anymore, like it used to.
Every parent that already lives here, or has posted of their plans to move here has already expressed these concerns and worries. Our kids are the warp threads that truly binds us all in the expatriate community. Living in Bali, in a village, a community, and knowing that my kids are known, loved and cared for by my community is I guess like Leave it to Beaver, or My Three Sons…a draw back to my early childhood in the early 1950’s in a Levittown kind of town in New England. I could ride my bike most anywhere, and when I came home for dinner, dad was always there.
Dr. Bruce, who knows for certain if your choices now, investment wise, will render great fruit for your children some 15 or so years down the line? You’ve obviously done your homework, carefully thought this out…thus you have done all that can be reasonably expected. If I had to take odds, I would say it’s a sure bet…a “no brainer.” Worst case scenario is that the down side is minimal, even if the whole “other world” is in utter turmoil.
The one thing I’ve noted in the last six years is the number of would be expats that are more like refugees than expatriates. Well educated, often well financed, and certainly not conventional thinkers, they seek “asylum” here. In my “crystal ball” I don’t see anything short of this increasing, more and more.
Ma’af if I’ve gotten too heavy with this discussion…but in all honesty, it’s nothing less than discussions I enjoy, and thrive on with my closest friends here.