Is the Sediment Weighing me Down?

If one thing can be said of my wife and I, it is that we are not sedentary folk. Live in the same place all our lives? What are we, from Utah or something? After one year in most locations we're usually anxious to pull up the stakes and move on. Sometimes when the watchful eyes of my spouse are directed elsewhere, I take a few minutes to look at the world map on our wall and imagine where our next adventure will lead us.

These moments, however, are becoming few and far between. In the few minutes of silence I enjoy, the more pressing matters of financing our ever growing tribe seem to encumber my thoughts. Ibn Khaldun, the famed fourteenth-century "Herodotus of the Arabs", observed in his treatise on universal history that the growth of empires resulted from powerful nomads who, trained by the harsh conditions of their lifestyle, directed their military prowess against their wealthy but impotent sedentary neighbors. Once wealth accrued, according to Ibn Khaldun, impuissance and decline were inevitable. The once vibrant force of nomadic life gave way to the luxuries of city life, a malaise invariably ensued until another nomadic and bellicose force absorbed the city dwellers into their new empire. Hence, Alexander's march across the decadent Achaemenid Persian Empire, the Germanic migrations that usurped the power of Rome, or the Bedouin Arabs that toppled the Sassanids and sent the Greeks cowering behind the walls of Constantinople.

Where is my family located on Ibn Khaldun's cycle of growth and decline? My gaze, once fixated on the horizon, now concentrates on the numbers in my bank statement. Our cushy job here in Doha makes us reluctant to move; it is the lure of the sedentary lifestyle. Like Shahs or Caesars of old I am more preoccupied with my coffers than the glory of the advance into the unknown. Full of financial worries and longing for the insouciance of my earlier life I now confront our dilemma: should we stay or should we go?