Tuesday, April 27, 2010

The Road Less Traveled...

I've been feeling.....weird...lately. 

{Remember on "What About Bob" - my favorite movie - when Bob goes in for his first appointment with Dr. Marvin?  "As long as I'm in my apartment I'm okay, but when I leave I get....weird."  "Talk about weird."  "Talk about weird....okay...."}

That's what I plan to do, and I kind of feel like Bob with a blogging world of psychiatrists listening. :)  I am having a hard time telling people about our plans and I think it's because I'm not sure what they'll think.  Some of the people we've told have kind of looked at us with super sympathetic eyes, like we're in the middle of the most horrible time of our lives.  One of those people found out we are selling all our things and said, "oh, I'm sorry you guys."  Another person said, "Well....life is upside-down for you guys right now, but..."

It's comments like that that keep my mouth closed about our plans.  Not that anyone is trying to make us feel...weird. :)  But we don't FEEL like we're in the most horrible time of life.  Yes we're making some changes...some BIG changes, but we don't feel sad at all.  We don't FEEL like life is upside-down.  Maybe we should, but we don't.  In fact, I feel more free and happy than I have in a long time.  Free from so many things.  I feel free from our home, which we love, but has been holding us down for almost a year now.  I feel free from our STUFF.  We both LOVE the idea of not having to lug a bunch of crap around anymore.  We are hanging on to the bare necessities and that feels so good!  Life is soooo not about things

One of our good friends - you might call him "older and wiser" - is a financial planner.  We sat down with him a couple of years ago and he taught us lots of good things...common sense things like the longer we could live as college students, the better off we'd be.  The thing he taught us that keeps coming to mind the most these days is that wealth isn't about having things.  (Speaking of financial wealth alone with the understanding that there are other pieces to the 'wealth puzzle'.)  Wealth is about cash flow.  I got what he meant in theory the day he said it to us, but now I get it with every part of me.  In this home, we are surrounded by beautiful things.  We have lots of things, but no wealth.  To experience wealth, we ALL have to live FAR below what we bring in which creates...cash flow.  

And I know that Jeff and I aren't there all the way yet, but I FEEL close to it, and I honestly FEEL wealthier than I did before we made this decision a few weeks ago.  I mean honestly.  My heart feels lighter, my mind is completely unburdened, my whole soul feels free. In a few weeks, we'll close on the sale of our home and go to live in a home that's much smaller, BUT that requires $0 in rent or mortgage payments.  Sometime after that, we'll sell our financed car and buy a truck for cash...again $0 in payments!  Don't YOU feel free just reading that?? :)  It's like a breath of fresh air to me...like spring fever times 1,000!!

I don't know why that's so hard for me to communicate to other people.  I guess I kind of feel like no matter what I say, maybe they won't believe me.  Who would believe that we are choosing to live in an RV and that we're excited about it and that it's exactly what we feel like we should be doing with our lives right now??  (haha....it just doesn't make sense on paper...even typing it it's hard to 'get') :)

There are a few people who get it and are just as excited as we are for our new adventure.  It probably shouldn't matter what anyone else thinks anyway.  I was reminded of that when I read this blog post by my sweet Aunt Melody.  She felt trapped by a full-time job...she longed to be free of it, so she made the decision to be...she left her 'cage'.  Her blog post talks about how even though she KNEW KNEW KNEW she had made the right decision, she still sometimes yearned for the safety of her cage.  And how she sometimes felt stupid for making the choice she'd made to be free.  I'm sure she sometimes felt crazy and judged and misunderstood.  BUT she knew what she'd done was the right thing for her and her family, and even if no one else in the world understood HOW or WHY it made sense for them, the truth is that it did.

I suppose the "road less traveled" is just that....less traveled.  The nature of a 'road less traveled' is that fellow travelers are few and far between....most people are on a different road.  And I guess sometimes people not only don't want to go down a different road themselves, but they honestly don't understand how anyone else would choose that road...And that's okay.  We don't expect everyone to see how this is the best thing for our family and how we are actually excited about it - heck sometimes I don't even see that! :)  And if people can't see and feel what's in our hearts, we can't expect them to see and understand either. 

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