The things I should have said
Because life is not about what we do, but about the people we spend it with
I wake up to my heart and thoughts racing.
The hedge needs to be trimmed. I need to mulch the flower beds. Call the landscaper to remind him to come and fix the steps to the vegetable plot, the one that needs to be cleared and fertilized.
And I thought homeownership was waking up refreshed to birdsong, peacefully enjoying my first cup of coffee on the balcony overlooking my little slice of paradise.
For a long time, it was my dream to own a spacious house with a beautiful garden. Friends had just built their own, settled down and had their first child.
I’m in my mid twenties and not interested in any of the wild stuff my peers are doing. Then again, I’ve just started a profession that promises anything but routine.
On the right seat of the Airbus A320, I fly to as many as five airports a day – each with its own challenges – and spend up to four nights in a row in a different city. Pizza in Naples, falafel in Amman, köttbullar in Stockholm and pelmeni in Yekaterinburg. Taking in the sights on a 12-hour layover, at the same time fueled and drained by the buzz of cleaning–catering–boarding–takeoff–landing–deboarding–rinse–and–repeat.
What a life!
I had grown up in the best of both worlds: a weeknight apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a weekend home in the suburbs. I had known the short distances, the everything-available-anytime, the stink and noise of the city; the fresh air, open space, the boredom and isolation of the country.
What perfection in their combination! One I would try to emulate by contrasting my jet-set life in the metropolises of the world with a home in suburbia – in 45-minute driving distance to the nearest city and thirty seconds from the forest with an endless network of hiking trails.
My own private resort hotel
Inspired by the luxuries I had experienced throughout my life, I plan a home to decompress after my journeys. A place that would feel like a permanent vacation, my own private wellness resort.
Sweating in the sauna and cooling off in the cold plunge outside, soaking in the jacuzzi under the stars or falling snow, aperitifs at the fireplace, cooking in a kitchen that would make a Michelin star chef envious, a movie in the home theatre before bed.
Are you laughing yet? I was serious and honestly thought this was my dream of life.
Naturally, the house would need a guest room to entice friends and family to come visit from around the world. A five-star suite they would enjoy crashing in after an evening of gourmet food and wine.
Near the end of the planning stage, I meet a girl and go full disclosure, sharing the plans and convincing her it would be a great idea to come along with me. In complete honesty, it’s more along the lines of “me with the house or nothing at all.”
Ten years later, it makes me cringe to even consider saying that, but coming to this insight would take quite a bit more time and pain.
From dream to nightmare
The permanent vacation never comes. The first estimate is 20% over budget. I had expected this and don’t intervene. Construction begins and costs continue spiraling upwards. Contractors don't finish their work, bills add up and eventually, I’m more than 60% over budget.
Despite financial support from my parents, my nerves are frayed. Three years of construction and the house is still far from finished. The more pressure I put on my architect, the less he works in my interest. As we move into a construction site, he begins actively blocking progress and it's inevitable that he needs to go.
The former dream house has become a nightmare.
With great difficulty, I persuade one contractor after another to continue his work. After two more crushing years, only odds and ends are left, things I will finish by myself in my own time.
But no matter how hard I try, I cannot find peace. What's more, I finally realize that I haven't been chasing my own dreams, but those of others – my parents, my friends, society at large.
What is it about the things other people own and do that make something in us go “I need that!” without even having known of the thing's existence just moments ago?
I’ve always had rooms and apartments overflowing with stuff. My parents’ love language is giving gifts. No matter what crazy new hobby I came home with, they’d always do everything in their power to help me get the gear I needed. One particularly memorable photo of my first birthday shows a tower of presents taller than I was.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m incredibly grateful to have had all these opportunities! But something is starting to feel off.
Virtual reality life
As I move into nearly 300 square meters of living space, I’m at “peak stuff”. Ironic, considering that I’ve long enjoyed reading books like Simplify your life or blogs like Leo Babauta’s mnmlist1. I still haven’t understood that all the things are just futile attempts at filling the emptiness inside us.
When someone tells me about their time in Sweden – a sauna right next to a lake, jumping into the cold water just as the sun sets and the sky takes on that most beautiful palette of colors – it hits me:
It’s like a simulation. Virtual reality.
I’ve built a box around a pile of stuff2, collecting artefacts of faraway places to remind me of those places instead of building a life that actually lets me spend more time in those places. Replicating the Swedish sauna experience next to the gourmet restaurant next to the English garden next to the observatory in the Atacama desert.
I’m getting to the root of things now, but I’m still standing in front of the wrong tree.
If you want to ruin your relationship, build a house
When I put my homeowner dreams into blueprints, I was single. I wouldn’t put off what I thought to be the life I wanted while I hoped to meet the right person to live it with. The house could be an awesome bachelor pad or a stylish home for a small family. Time would tell.
Fast-forward seven years. Many a couple has separated over the attempt at building a house. It’s never an easy task. Success is predicated on the will to support each other, no matter how ugly things get. In our case, failure comes with the inability to process the stress brought about by the construction and a remorseful nostalgia for life in the sh!tty old apartment we lived in before.
It should have been a warning sign. But I was still far from understanding how life in that objectively inferior place could be better than in the perfect designer house.
As the relationship fades with the pressure of a life imagined differently, I am again searching for a dream to follow. The realization sets in that the simple dichotomy of traveling for work and leisurely resort-home rest is not what I truly want. As much as I love the life of an airline pilot, there’s a reason I reduced my working hours over ten years ago.
I want the home life and I want to explore the world – but on my own terms! Wandering, roaming with minimal baggage, moving on when I don’t like a place and staying longer when I do.
Moving the goalpost again
Social media algorithms know your pain and get me hooked on the vanlife scene. Selling the house and most of my belongings to move into a van full-time – that sounds like the solution to my problems.
And there’s something even better than a van. A whole subculture of modern nomads converts old military and fire trucks into world-trip-capable 4WD offroad expedition vehicles.
Me want!
Ever restless, I start getting rid of all the stuff that isn’t making me happy and start working on the project that will. You’d think I had learned my lesson.
Then I do that painfully cringey thing again.
Making the same mistake again
I rarely meet women I’m interested in. But all of a sudden, I’m sitting across from her, heart racing, thinking to myself how is it possible for someone to be this amazing? And secretly, in a corner of my mind: I hope she’ll join me in my truck.
We’re sitting on my couch, she’s brought picture books for us to fantasize about our first trip to Sweden. When she sees a book by a couple traveling the world in their truck lying on my coffee table, she says “I want to see that one first!”
We leaf through the pages and I cautiously reveal details of my project. Confusion makes way to awe, we talk about her getting a truck driver’s license and the possibilities of remote work.
Emboldened by the amazement of countless repetitions of “oh wow, you like that, too? Me too,” I go down the insane road of assuming we would agree on absolutely everything and she would want to completely mold her life plans onto mine.
Do you see the mistake I was so blind to?
With butterflies in our stomachs, we go on our first incredible rooftop tent camping trip, our heads full of dreams of a beautiful future and fears of it all being too good to be true.
Not talking about important things damages a relationship. But imagining what your partner might be thinking, and expecting your fears to be congruent with reality kills it.
Choose love
One single time, I heard her mention incidentally that she couldn’t imagine living in a truck. I don’t even remember the exact words because I was scared sh!tless to do what was necessary. To say:
Hold up! This is one crazy dream I have, one potential turn in a multiverse in which every single thought, moment and decision are the singularity from which infinite possible futures unfold.
I’ve changed my mind in ways I could never imagine, often from single moments and encounters. I’m writing this from the deck of a sailboat, an Airbnb I rented for two days. With the first sip of beer in the sunset, my thoughts wander to the possibility of one day owning my own boat. But then, I think of her words:
It’s still stuff, a material possession, something that takes away from your freedom.
Wandering, roaming with minimal baggage … wasn’t that what I wanted?
I need only a backpack and a passport to travel the world.
Letting go of the oppressive weight of responsibility I have now. Living the life that’s really meant for me: doing the things that feel good with the people that feel good.
Only when the damage had already been done did I realize that maybe it is I who wants to live life differently.
The exact way we choose to live our lives is significantly less important than the people we decide to spend them with. In fact, our dreams and aspirations change precisely because of the people we meet that rock the foundation of what we thought to be a life worth living.
There's a difference between giving up your dreams for someone and choosing together which ones you want to pursue.
–Mark Manson
It doesn’t matter what we do, as long as we do it together.
Life is what happens while you’re busy making plans
I don’t know if I'll never own a house again. Most likely I’ll never again own one that costs all the money I make, that takes up most of my time to maintain and that is such a refined designer crib that I'm afraid to knock or scrape or brush against something because it’s sure to be damaged in the process.
I want knocking, scraping and brushing against the things I own to be a good thing, an act that, should it change these things, does so for the better. Give them patina. A sheen showing they have seen life.
Kind of like with human beings. I love watching her laugh because she has the most incredible laugh lines. I remember telling her that I believe she will become ever more beautiful with age, not despite those wrinkles, but because of them.
If I ever own another house, it will be small, it will be imperfect, it will look and smell and feel of the love that lives in every atom and in all the space between the atoms.
Especially in that space between.
The world around us is 0.0001% matter and 99.9999% emptiness.3 That's how tiny the material parts of matter are and how massive the space between them. Almost impossible to imagine.
Just like it used to be impossible for me to imagine that the future I was planning was not the one I was going to live.
George Carlin talks about “Stuff”:
Actually, energy, and this is very simplified.
This was a great read, Ulrich! Thanks for showing us so clearly what happens if we follow dreams that might not really be our own.
Wauw, what an article. So raw and real, thank you for this, very inspiring Ulrich!