I Don’t Want To Justify My Life Anymore

I ended up having a discussion yet again with a traditional 9–5er about travelling long-term. His argument was that I cannot travel forever.

I asked why.

He said, because of family.

I said, I am not going to have children.

His reply, You are still going to be in a relationship and you need to settle down for that.

I am absolutely baffled whenever I hear someone proclaim to me that you need to be in one place for the rest of your life in order to be in a relationship, for family or for children. It is amazing to me how these preconceived notions that we carry around with us for generations can literally trap us into narrow-minded thinking. I am also surprised that people constantly feel the need to tell me why I can’t live my life the way I already do. Is it because they feel threatened by a different lifestyle? I don’t know the reason why.

But I do know this. I have never challenged someone because they have children or they choose to live in one place for the rest of their life. I have never argued with them for the way they choose to live their life. I write a blog about non-conformist living because I like to connect with others who are living differently, and to feel like I am part of a community. But I would never go up to a woman with a child or a man with a family and tell him she or he is living their life wrongly.

But I have people coming up to me constantly, and telling me that I am living life wrongly. It surprises me to hear them arguing against me and my conscious (well thought-out) decision to live a different life. Why do I have to constantly justify my life to someone else? Just like you should not ask a homosexual person to justify their homosexuality – it is an innate part of their persona – the same way you shouldn’t ask a long-term traveller to justify their lifestyle.

I am not harming anyone in the way I live. I am living a life with a small footprint, seeing the world as much as possible in the short lifetime that I have, saving up enough money so I will not be dependent on social security in my old age, and supporting the local economies wherever I go. I am doing it right. Why then is everyone so against the idea?

Why does a person have to live in a traditional manner especially in the twenty-first century? With all the technology that pervades our lives, I would have imagined that everyone is free to choose the way they live. Especially if it doesn’t harm anyone else’s way of life.

I realize asking questions like this is blasphemous – you should just live the traditional life that everyone is living and shut up. Finding alternative ways of living isn’t an option that is on the table.

The reason I wrote this post is to perhaps send the message out there into the ether that I refuse to play the game anymore. I am not going to fumble and blither anymore. I am not going to go into reasons why I chose the lifestyle I chose. I refuse to answer those questions. They are unnecessary and unfounded.

Just accept that I am weird and let me be.