Sell My Old Clothes, I’m Off to Heaven
The priority of living, or at least that’s what I think
My wife and I were once called brave-we left our successful NYC jobs, sold our picturesque one-hundred-year-old home in the suburbs of New Jersey, and bought some land near the coast of Rhode Island. From conception to execution-from the day we decided to make the move to the day we woke up in South County Rhode Island, was 15 months.
In 15 months we made a financial plan, found and purchased a piece of land, started new jobs, sold our home, found a place to rent while we develop our property, and moved our life to Rhode Island.
During those 15 months while we were figuring out this next chapter of our lives, brave, was never a word that crossed my mind. My wife and I saw an opportunity for a significant life change and decided to take advantage of it. Crazy or ambitious might have been on the list of adjectives to describe what we were doing, but not brave.
I often reflect on the now last two years of my life. My wife and I are still in the middle of this significant moment-and in the whirlwind of all these changes sometimes I tend to lose sight of the impact this journey has had.
When revealing that we are new to the area, or in catching up with family and friends, their first question is, “what made you move, did work bring you to Rhode Island?”
For me, the answer to this question reveals something powerful, and maybe even for a moment allows me to see brave, as an acceptable definition of our escape from the New York Metro area.
With confidence, I always reply, “we moved here because we wanted to. We actually quit our jobs to be in Rhode Island.”
Life is rarely put on the list of priorities. Somewhere wrapped up in my personal American Dream has always been this vision of, living in a beach community, surfing in the morning, working smart, not hard, weekends with family and friends, morning coffee with my wife, and hearing the North Atlantic in the distance. It’s defined as a dream for a reason; it tends to live and die as a dream, not a reality.
It seems unfortunate that for so many of us our lives have become consumed with everything but living. We have reached a place where the actions and steps that we need to take to reclaim our lives tower over us. When I start to list what my wife and I did to make our move to New England, maybe it was, or still is brave-considering what we needed to accomplish and persevere. Did I mention, we also had to live with my parents for two months.
A powerful statement has risen from this experience and a concept that I continue to use as my mantra-a guide for my wife and I as we continue to negotiate our new lives in Rhode Island. Life on our terms. It’s not easy to live by, but I have started to experience the benefits-it feels weird at first, but then you can’t understand why anyone would live any other way.
