The Good Life...?

I recently read an article in which a 31-year-old woman left her hectic, yet "successful", life in NYC to move to St. John, the smallest of the U.S. Virgin Islands. She went from making $95,000 as a journalist in Manhattan to serving ice cream and bartending for $10 an hour, and she couldn't be more happy.

While traveling, one tends to meet these types of people. People that had very secure, professional, high-paying jobs that they became increasingly disillusioned with until they reached a breaking point, quit, and packed their bags to explore the world.

Just a smattering of examples: a fellow American English teacher in Chile had worked in the R&D department for a prominent cosmetics company for several years before quitting and coming to Chile. An Iranian-English man worked a marketing job before packing up and moving to the Philippines to work at a hostel. Two German girls I met on a day tour in Vietnam worked as pharmacists before leaving their jobs to travel the world.

At one point on our tour I asked the German girls, "What are you going to do when you go back to Germany."

They laughed and said, "We have no idea."

I'm not being sarcastic or condescending when I think, "That's great", in response to their complete uncertainty about their future.

There is a reason I put "success" in quotations earlier. The markers of "success" that we have built for ourselves (at least in the United States) lacks any and all substantive meaning for me: rising the corporate ladder, buying a house, buying a nice car, marrying, having children, and making a lot of money to buy nice things. I believe it was once called the American Dream.

Don't get me wrong, I totally see the appeal in the comfortable security that that lifestyle brings, but it in mind, it begs several questions: Where is the excitement? Where is the novelty? Where is the adventure?

When you've planned your life to such a degree, I would argue that there is very little room for excitement, novelty, or adventure except possibly for those two coveted weeks you have for vacation once a year.

For now, my ideal life is teaching English in one place for a year or two at a time, traveling for several months (including some random employment working at bars and hostels), and then finding a new place to teach.

To a degree, this is a "plan". But having no idea where I will be or what I will be doing a few years from now is where the excitement, novelty, and adventure lie. All I know is that, for me, life is too short to worry about things like car insurance, mortgage payments, and...children. 

Barring any sort of metaphysical or existential engagement into this topic, I'd rather just point out some lyrics from "Once in a Lifetime" by Talking Heads as a final statement. When I think of "taking the road less traveled" vs. the "comfortable, secure life", these are often the words that come to my mind:

"And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack,
And you may find yourself in another part of the world,
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile,
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife,
And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?"