Why we aren't 'brave' (or, check your privilege)
Throughout our wonderful two months home,
visiting friends and family and having merriment in general, we had the
opportunity to tell people about our future adventures over and over again.
Most people were generally encouraging, even
if they didn’t have any reference frame in which to put this new life of ours.
My favorite example of a conversation typifying this sentiment was between my
mother and her former colleague. The colleague said (paraphrasing), “Going to work
in Asia on the computer huh? That’s so cool! Gosh, we would have never even
thought to travel at their age. We were just proud we had good jobs.” And this
is true, absolutely true. Not only were there no internets back then, but the
cost of travel was prohibitive. And, it is always hard to be the first to do
something if no one you know has done something like it.
Every once in awhile someone would tell us,
“You are so brave to be doing this.”
I would usually respond with an attempt at
humor and say something like, “Yeah, brave. In a month I am going to send you
a picture of me on the beach drinking a fancy cocktail without a care in the
world with a caption underneath it that says ‘Bravery.’”
But here is the most honest and full response:
We aren’t brave, we are lucky. Plain and
simple.
We luckily made enough money to put some into
savings.
We luckily were both of the same mind about
the plans to move to Southeast Asia.
We luckily both had parents that taught us to
be independent and adventurous.
We luckily knew someone who was already doing
this sort of thing so we didn’t have to be
the first.
We luckily don’t have huge financial
responsibilities at home (kids, infirm parents, etc.).
Yeah, we did some stuff to help the process,
like not buying new cars every two years, not getting into a mortgage, trying
to keep living costs low. But most of that was because, luckily, we both have
sort of an allergy to crap. Our programming was to not want to have this stuff
and to feel trapped and weighed down by it. There are people who love their new
car, and great for them. But they are not us and we are not them. The security
of a house seemed a lot like a prison sentence to us.
You're funny, girl. And lucky ;) Love the perspective.
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