Settle down, but never settle

I recently returned to the US for the first time in over nine months during the holiday season. My wife and I spent a hectic week in New York catching up with friends and colleagues and then a week each with her parents and mine. I was struck by the sheer number of people in Manhattan, how cold it was, how expensive things seemed to be. Things that perhaps I had chosen to forget. I also felt the energy radiating off the buildings and through subway grates. I found myself staring up at glass towers like a tourist, squinting in the sun as I was swept down the sidewalk amongst the crowds. It's natural to wonder what you’ll miss after leaving a place you've called home. For me, this is the thing that drew me to the bright lights as a kid and turned me into a New Yorker over a decade.

Everything has a flip side and what makes the endless brunches, overpriced real estate, dirty streets and crowded subways worth enduring is the energy. It's something you can’t quite put your finger on but if you’ve lived there you know what I’m talking about. It's the desk jockey taking a hushed call for their side hustle in the corner of their "day-job" office. It's the bleary eyed cook sitting the subway in the middle of the night on his way out to Queens making eye contact with the nurse who is headed to work in the opposite direction. It's the stockbroker, the con artist, the media mogul with their Maybach idling outside their Park Avenue building and the intern packing their leftovers for lunch the next day. It's the hustle. This, unless and until I return, I will forever miss.

While we were home, the two most common questions I heard were “what has been your favorite place so far?” and “where do you think you’ll end up when you settle down?” The former I’ve already shared some thoughts on so I’d like to focus on the latter. This assumption that it’s not a matter of if, but when we will settle down. For some reason, I have a visceral reaction the phrase "to settle down." I find myself stuck on the word settle and the following definition: “to be content with.” According to Merriam Webster (which for no real reason still feels like the authority when it comes to definitions), this isn’t even in the top 10 meanings for that term. You have to scroll down to “Settle for” to even see it. However, this is where my mind goes.

Certainly, most people do not have a negative association with this concept. Among other things, what they really mean is to have a nice home, a comfortable job and a family. They’re talking about stability and consistency. I have nothing against either. In many aspects of my life, from my health to my daily work schedule, they are critical to my happiness and productivity. The problem I have is with the fact that the prescription is the same for everyone. High school, college, job, dating then marriage, house in the suburbs, fancy cars if you’re lucky, vacation home if you’re luckier. From the moment we're old enough to understand what they mean, these expectations are foisted upon us everywhere we look. We see an idealized image of the perfect family, a representation of the American dream. People cannot seem to accept that any deviation from this norm could possibly be intentional. That seven year old kid who is making over $20 million a year from YouTube videos? Scoff! Did you hear about the family who sold their house and moved into a trailer? Disaster waiting to happen! How about the Wall Streeter who quit his job to open a food truck. What a jackass!

Have you ever endeavored to stop drinking temporarily, avoid sweets altogether, or made some other nonconformist decision related to your health? One of the worst aspects of doing this, equally as bad as the actual withdrawal of the thing you are giving up, is the reaction of the people around you. You can sense coworkers talking behind your back about about how it will never last. At happy hours and brunches, friends literally attempt to force drinks or dessert on you. They cannot enjoy themselves unless you are partaking to the same degree. Why is this? One obvious answer is that they are projecting their own insecurities onto you. Another is that they simply can’t accept something that isn’t “normal.” You are making a decision that flies in the face of what they expect, similar to a child who walks downstairs in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve to find their father placing presents under the tree with half a cookie hanging out of his mouth. The brain can’t process what’s been placed in front of it. It searches for explanations and when there are none starts to question reality.

For whatever reason I’ve never had this reaction to things that don't actually affect me. If someone wants to abstain while I’m imbibing, let them! Perhaps the same underlying beliefs also draw me to reject, or at least question, many societal presumptions. I used to think home ownership was a no-brainer investment and no longer believe that to be the case, despite having been lucky timing-wise with my own home purchase and subsequent sale. As someone who completed a year of business school, I think its unnecessary for the vast majority of people (although everyone should have to take the basic communication course that went through). I believe that the default path is just that: the default. Do some people leave the settings on their iPhone exactly as they were out of the box? I'm sure some people do. Maybe my grandparents. The rest of us customize the background, notifications, sounds and many other settings to suit our individual preferences. Designing a life should be similar.

Some people want nothing more than the corporate job, the house, the cars and the kids. This is a great thing. I hope that this brings them fulfillment and joy every single day. Others might dream about living off the grid, completely self-sufficient in a peaceful forest or on a bustling farm. Someone out there is writing the business plan for their fifth startup while their fourth failure is in the process of imploding. For some, having children is something they have looked forward to their entire life. Others have no desire whatsoever. The point is that in our modern age the prescription for success and happiness is no longer one-size-fits all. It's different for everyone and the only thing that really matters is that we are relentless in the pursuit of our dreams.

To the expectation that my wife and I must "settle down" some day, in the typical sense of the phrase, I say this: no thanks. Thats your dream, not ours. Will we have a fixed address someday? Perhaps. Will we have cars and kids and toys and all of that? Maybe. Will we do it because that’s what we are expected to do? Hell no. If there is one thing I have learned from our short time on the road, it's that adventure is the key to a happy life. I’m seeking a balance between variety and stability. So far we’ve found that with an uncompromising work schedule (we are at our computers working from at least 9AM to 5PM EST every weekday) and by living in each city long enough that it starts to feel like home (after which it's time to move on). This does not mean we must be nomadic forever in order to maintain a sense of adventure. Just that we will make decisions based on what's best for our family, not on what’s expected of us by friends, family or society. This is not an easy thing. Going against the grain creates friction, makes you a little bit weird at the very least, and simple things are harder than they otherwise would be. That said, the most rewarding things in life are often the hardest.