The independence paradox
When the life you built starts to feel permanent – and that suddenly feels terrifying.
My mum kissed me goodnight and turned off my light until the day I moved out at the age of 18.
I now tell Alexa to turn my lamp off each night and tuck myself in.
There is both a sadness in that and an overwhelming sense of independence. A level of pride in the woman I have become, alongside a yearning for connection that does not come from speaking to a robot in the corner of my room.
But I built this life/room all by myself. I furnished it to feel like a sanctuary. I got the job to fund it and moved to the other side of the world on my own.
This path is common these days. Lots of people do it, but do not let that detract from how hard it really is. The power of planes has made this decision easily reversible. You can decide to ship your life to a new continent and, two weeks later, if you decide you do not like it, you can book a flight home. Unless you are a stubborn eldest daughter like me, who has now not been home for three years.
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When you are working hard to buy yourself a bed rather than sleeping on an air mattress for another month, you are focused on the goal. You become hooked on the challenge and on proving to yourself that you can make it work.
When the city is novel, exploring your new home feels romantic. It does not matter that you do not know anyone because you are alive with the hope of a meet-cute in your recently discovered favourite coffee shop.
Visiting the supermarket is exciting because the offering is different from back home and you have been dangerously introduced to the idea of a ready meal. The only appliance needed is a microwave and there are zero dishes involved. Life-changing for someone who hates the kitchen.
But when you fall into routine and the point is proven, you are a strong and independent young person. There becomes much more brain space to sit with the fact that you have not seen your cousins since they were kids and now they feel like not-so-little teenagers. There is space to think about what the next big thing you want to do is, rather than simply being proud of what has already been accomplished.
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Once life becomes mundane and you are moving through the same phases every day, it feels steady and predictable. Rather than not knowing which country I might visit next week, as I did when I was travelling, I now know I have boxing every Monday and Wednesday evening. There is a harsh contrast between these two ways of life and, undoubtedly, it shapes the way you think. When routine takes care of my schedule, there are far fewer decisions to make each day. With fewer decisions comes more brain space for exploration.
The thing is, once life starts to feel sustainable long term, I immediately begin to pair it with the thought that it could become permanent. And for something to remain the same forever, I would want it to be perfect. But then perfect does not exist, especially when it comes to curating a life for an ever-changing being. So I am left with cold feet and the overwhelming feeling that my life needs an attempt at an upgrade.
The question then becomes: do you sit with that thought and act rationally, treating your lifestyle like a science experiment and adjusting one variable at a time so it is measurable how much that change impacts the way you feel about your routine? Or do you flip your life upside down and move to a new country, start a new career and meet all new people again because life is short and you want to experience as much as possible?
I don’t have the answers to these questions. I have tried both and I regret neither. Life is the most nuanced of them all and perhaps this means it will forever remain a question with no right answer, because it depends entirely on the circumstances at hand.
While I feel pride in the independence I have built for myself, I also have days when I wish someone could tell me the answer. And on those days, I also wish my mum was here to turn off my light and wish me sweet dreams.