It was in early 2021 that I arrived in a place I’d heard good things about. Noosa is something like the showcase of Australia’s dreamy Sunshine Coast and I remember the first weekend there. The colors, the warmth, everything feels a bit better, more intense.
In Noosa, I got to wind down for a bit, finding some work and renting a room in a house with pool and some entertaining housemates. More often than not, the evenings were too warm to spend them inside the house and so I got to hang out by the ocean quite a bit to swim, surf or just enjoy the sunset.
While doing so, I got in touch with van people, typically working-holiday makers doing untrained work, enjoying life and the surf while saving money by living in their vans. And I found that there is much more to this lifestyle than just living on a budget and sleeping in your vehicle. In a way, it seemed a healthy approach to life as in not thinking so much about the future and developing a strong sense of happiness and content while connecting with others.
Can one live too much in the moment, not thinking about tomorrow? I see people who are incredibly content, who work a bit to live and just enjoy life. One might oppose that this way of life is a short lived one, that one will reach a point at a certain age where they regret not having thought of the future. But such oppositions usually come from people who aren’t living in the moment in the first place, who are working to live later. And once later comes, they still think of later as they’ve become so used to it.
I rather think that to some extent, if one cultivates a sense of content with life’s presence, then maybe some adversity in terms of health or economical problems in the future won’t seem all too bad.
It seems inevitable to talk about these things without sounding a little cheesy, pretentious, or woke. Of course, we are thinking ahead and of the future, that’s what sets us apart as humans. It is our greatest strength and our greatest weakness at the same time. If we don’t give some awareness to our thoughts, it is all too easy to lose touch with reality, with what is happening around us.
On How to Live Your Life
Make money in your 20s, plan your retirement in your 30s. Have a goal. Buy assets. Buy a house. Start a family early on as to have time for yourself in your 50s. Wellmeant advice on how one should live their life is often communicated, verbally or in a more subtle way. Although there is nothing wrong with concepts like this one, the thing is that they rather are a correlation with a content way of life but not the cause of it. That said and when blindly following them, you are likely to come to a point where you ask yourself: And what then? And that is a good thing. Asking yourself what you want out of life, even if you don’t have the answer just yet, is a question that brings you a more in touch with yourself, with your being, if you will.
On a bottom line, no one can tell you how to live your life. How you feel about what you do should be the indicator rather than doing the right thing by merely following well-intentioned advice on this matter.
“What is right, my friend, and what is not right? Need we anyone to tell us these things?”
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