Montenegro Girl x
Why I want to escape the rat race for the simple life
My dream is to escape the rat race for a simple life in a small – but perfectly formed – house by the beach somewhere hot. (Montenegro, actually. How did you guess?).
I want to wake up to a morning coffee looking out to the sea, spend my days writing and reading and reflecting, eating good fresh food outdoors and swimming in the sea. Living a slow pace of life with the people that I love in a beautiful place. With the sun shining.
A lot of people would say, sounds idyllic. But unrealistic.
But the thing is I actually do mean it and I’m on my way. It won’t ensure I have a perfect life with no problems. Of course not. And it is not as outwardly radical a step into it as I would like (at least not at the moment).
It’s more of a journey I’m choosing to make in my life. Guided by a picture which bears the qualities of the sort of life I want. One I’m working my way towards, quietly determined within.
Why I’m fed up of the rat race
I’m fed up of hearing the humble brag and seeing all the busywork around me. I don’t want to feel overwhelmed by the frenzy of drama and fear whipped up on a daily basis by instantly delivered news and opinions. I’m tired with all the show and measuring-up that no one seems to openly admit to being caught up in, yet seem to silently live out their lives by.
I’ve never bought into the regular sort of 9-5 kind of life, the pursuit of more, working my way up the career ladder, keeping up with the Jones’. Even when I was at university, nothing in me was attracted to the graduate trainee programme with top companies nor the standard professions that others seemed to think I should go for with my Russian degree.
Despite raised eyebrows I ended up setting up my own jewellery business instead. Since that time I have always loved being self-employed, as it makes me feel “master of my own destiny” in some way.
The freedom of a simple life
Looking back, I realise have always valued autonomy and freedom (although I may not have recognised it so clearly when I was younger). As a result, I have always tried to resist the temptation to take on more financial responsibilities than necessary (no car payments for me!). I didn’t (and still don’t) want to feel trapped and weighed down by my direct debits, leaving myself with no breathing room or flexibility.
I have always tried to resist the temptation to take on more financial responsibilities than necessary.
Making choices like these weren’t that popular when I set out as a working adult. At least not amongst my peers, who went into jobs like accountants and marketing executives. So, it wasn’t always easy, and I wasn’t always understood by others when I took this contrary view.
But it became really hard later when I got married and had a child. A whole new world of expectations and demands opened up. The momentum and surge of society’s norm – ie the rat race – really started to impact me, as life was no longer about just me. I no longer felt like “master of my own destiny” but it seemed like I was instead sharing the position with someone else.
But the real power of the rat race lay in the fact that it crept up on me over some years without me realising it. Just like the saying about the frog and the boiling water. You can put a frog in boiling water, and he will leap out immediately. But put him in water and gradually bring it to the boil and he will just stay in and boil to death. (I haven’t tried this experiment personally, I may add).
The rat race & depression
For me the rat race didn’t have me in its hold because I was personally living a 9-5 existence commuting long hours and trying to keep up with the latest flash car and designer bag. It came in the guise of a pressure to conform to what other people (and myself) thought I should be – a good wife, an achiever and earner, a model daughter-in-law.
It caused me to work harder and harder in certain areas of my life (work, home, family commitments) and push aside my own needs (and values) such as time for reflection and writing and reading and a slower pace of life. It was all about being productive and efficient and running at the speed that everyone else was going. Although of course I didn’t see this so clearly at the time.
I didn’t end up boiling to death thankfully, but I ended up in a bad depression. I was silently combusting inside my own head and I got to the point where I knew that it was time to make a change. A 180-degree turn.
I realised that I needed peace more than I needed approval.
Deciding to escape the rat race & live a simple life
Ever since losing my dad when I was 16, I have firmly believed that good things can come out of bad things. And indeed, that was again true in this period of my life. It took a while, certainly, as I had to unravel the gloop in my head and work through the process of change inside and out.
I started saying no to the social things I thought I should go to but found very stressful, like, mum’s nights out (with acquaintances rather than good friends). I stopped reading anything newsy and self-improvement or spirituality related to stop the overwhelm of information. I decluttered my possessions, working my way through our large 3 bedroomed home like a woman possessed. I basically took the pressure off myself to do the things I thought I should be doing.
And I gave myself the permission to do this because I realised that I needed peace more than I needed approval. It was a matter of survival in fact at that point. But it was one of the greatest lessons that I have learnt and still live by today.
Life’s messy places can indeed produce hidden treasures.
True success in life is measured by the degree of peace, joy and love we experience and share.
Redefining success to escape the rat race & live a simple life
So, I’m holding on to that hard-fought-for peace.
I’ve stopped expecting the approval of others, so I don’t get thrown off balance when I don’t feel acknowledged by those outside my immediate family. I value peace with myself, even if it means I may have to sacrifice the recognition and admiration from others. I don’t enter myself for the good daughter-in-law competition anymore. I don’t run the race other parents seem to be caught up in of excessive children’s after-school activities and obsession about schooling.
I’ve defined my own version of success in life. That is, true success in life is measured by the degree of peace, joy and love we experience and share.
Because to be brutally honest when we are lying on our death beds, those are the actual things that we will look back on and cherish – in whatever form they showed up in our lives. And the same goes for the loved ones we will leave behind.
And I believe real peace, joy and love do not come by blindly following the urgent call of the majority that would pull you along doing things that have the appearance of looking important and worthy. Status, instgram beauty, popularity, large impressive homes and cars and “having it all”. Things that do not turn out to have much meaning at all in the end.
So that’s why I want to leave the rat race for a simple life. Because I only get one shot at life. And so do you.
And I want to be the best me I can be and lead a meaningful life in which I can thrive. Not simply survive.
Montenegro Girl x
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I was really interested to see in your introduction and how you plan to escape the rat race and move to Montenegro one day, especially this part where you say “And I realised that Montenegro had become a place where I feel it’s OK to be me in way that I’ve not quite felt in English culture.” This brought me on to this post which I enjoyed reading.
I moved to Spain after finishing my degree for the same reason; to escape the rat race. Life was neither simple nor easy in Spain (but it was sunny!). Just like you, there was a point where I realised that I didn’t feel under the same pressure and expectations as I would have done in the UK. However, interestingly, when I talk to Spanish people living in the UK, I realise that they have the same feeling of “freedom” from the cultural expectations in which they were brought up whilst living abroad. It’s curious how because we don’t feel the cultural expectations so heavily in another country, we can overcome them more easily. They’re there, of course. Maybe, it’s just that we, as the frog, look in on the boiling water from a different perspective.
Hi Rebecca Thanks for your comment – that’s fascinating. I am conscious that we still take ourselves with us wherever we are, so there is a certain amount of internal stuff that will always be present in some form or another whatever the country. No country will be able to erase all difficulties in life, as you say. But I do agree that it is easier to see things in a different culture to the one we are brought up in. We tend to “absorb” things from the culture we have grown up in and these norms somehow get entangled in our mindset (whether good or bad). Whereas we come to a country abroad as an outsider – so to speak – where we are “starting from scratch” and this can free us up to approach our lives / ourselves a new way. It really is very interesting what you say and I find it encouraging nonetheless to hear that you realised that you didn’t feel under the same pressure and expectation. Whilst I hear the phrase the grass is never greener in the back of my mind a lot, I do intrinsically feel that some environments are better suited to us as individuals more than others. And I do believe that some cultures can help to draw out another side of us that may not be as easily encouraged in own country. A fascinating comment. Thanks so much for reading the post!