What would it take for you to completely uproot your life and try something totally different? To leave the comfort and relative security of your suburban or city life and, say, move to Africa? To find yourself by getting lost?
I read an article recently, I think in Outside magazine, about somebody who did just that. He and his wife left their lives in the United States. Sold most of their possessions and their home, quit their jobs, and moved to Africa. It wasn't some haphazard decision made by a couple people who just thought it might be a cool idea. It was actually several years in the making. They debated the idea for a while, came up with pros and cons, talked to friends and family, and then finally decided to, in the words of Nike, just do it.
So, they tied up their loose ends, paid off outstanding bills, renewed their passports, and said goodbye.
Now they're living in Kenya. Both are spending a vast majority of their time living amongst the native people in small villages getting a feel for what a more simplistic lifestyle is like. Trying to escape and become this generation's Allie Fox. But, seeing as how they are leaving family behind, they will be making occasional jaunts into local cities for the purpose of communication and, perhaps, research. Otherwise, they intend to wholly distance themselves from the lives they've come to know.
Of course, it will never be the same for them as it is for those who live the life everyday. They realize this. They will be viewed as outsiders and will always be treated as such. But they are doing what they can to experience the life and to, ideally, help in whatever way they can. They are not part of some religious mission or an organized aid group of any kind. Just two people. Doing what they believe is their calling. Finding themselves by losing themselves.
And I envy them this decision.
I'm not trying to say that I'm unhappy with my life. Quite the opposite, in fact. I love my life and my wife. But I wonder what kind of personal wherewithall it would take to do something like this and whether or not I could do it. I somehow doubt it. But it's a romantic thought all the same.
